Expelled South African ambassador says new status is 'badge of dignity'

South African ambassador to the United States Ebrahim Rasool, who was expelled from the country and labeled persona non grata by the Trump administration, arrived home on Sunday to a warm welcome, calling his new U.S. status a "badge of dignity."

Rasool and his wife were surrounded by crowds gathered at the airport and supporters sang songs to welcome them. The couple required a police escort to help them through the terminal.

“A declaration of persona non grata is meant to humiliate you,” Rasool said while addressing the crowds with a megaphone.

“But when you return to crowds like this, and with warmth ... like this, then I will wear my persona non grata as a badge of dignity," he said.

“It was not our choice to come home, but we come home with no regrets," the diplomat added.

Earlier this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared Rasool “persona non grata” and accused him of being a “race-baiting politician” over his comments criticizing President Trump.

“South Africa’s Ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome in our great country,” Rubio said in a post on X. “Emrahim Rasool is a race-baiting politician who hates America and hates @POTUS. We have nothing to discuss with him and so he is considered PERSONA NON GRATA.”

Rasool had accused Trump of leading a “white supremacist movement” at home and abroad during a video address to a think-tank.

“So in terms of that, the supremacist assault on incumbency, we see it in the domestic politics of the USA, the MAGA movement, the Make America Great Again movement, as a response not simply to a supremacist instinct, but to very clear data that shows great demographic shifts in the USA in which the voting electorate in the USA is projected to become 48 percent white,” Rasool said. 

“And so that needs to be factored in, so that we understand some of the things that we think are instinctive, nativist, racist things, I think that there’s data that, for example, would support that, that would go to this wall being built, the deportation movement,” the South Africa diplomat said in comments that led to a strong response from the administration.

Rasool served as South Africa’s ambassador in Washington from 2010 to 2015 and had returned to the position earlier this year.