People wade into Lake Victoria in Entebbe, Uganda, in 2024. Uganda is the fourth African country to reach a deal to accept deportees from the United States.David Goldman/The Associated Press
Uganda has become the latest African country to agree to accept deportees from the United States, helping to facilitate President Donald Trump’s campaign to send millions of migrants and asylum seekers to other countries.
The Ugandan government initially denied media reports that it had reached an agreement with the Trump administration, saying it lacked the infrastructure to accept new deportees. But a day later, it acknowledged that it had struck a deal.
“The agreement is in respect of third-country nationals who may not be granted asylum in the United States but are reluctant to or may have concerns about returning to their countries of origin,” said Bagiire Vincent Waiswa, permanent secretary of the Ugandan Foreign Ministry, in a statement on Thursday.
Trump faces backlash over African deportation deals
Rwanda will accept up to 250 deportees from the U.S. under Trump’s third-country program
He did not disclose the number of asylum seekers who would be accepted in Uganda, or whether his government would be paid by Washington in exchange for the agreement.
“This is a temporary arrangement with conditions including that individuals with criminal records and unaccompanied minors will not be accepted,” he said. “Uganda also prefers that individuals from African countries shall be the ones transferred to Uganda.”
Uganda becomes the fourth African country to reach a deal to accept deportees from the United States. The others are South Sudan, Rwanda and Eswatini, the tiny kingdom formerly known as Swaziland. All four are among the most authoritarian regimes on the continent, where opposition activists are routinely arrested or harassed.
Uganda, ruled by its autocratic President Yoweri Museveni for more than 39 years, often cracks down on opposition protests with brutal police tactics. At least 54 people were killed in 2020 when Ugandan security forces fired at demonstrators during an election campaign.
A year later, the United States imposed sanctions and visa restrictions on several senior Ugandan officials for their roles in human-rights abuses. But the crackdown has continued. A prominent opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, was kidnapped in Kenya last year and sent back to Uganda, where he now stands trial.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not seem to discuss any of those issues when he spoke to Mr. Museveni by phone on Thursday. Instead, they talked about “opportunities to deepen U.S.-Uganda co-operation on migration, reciprocal trade, and commercial ties,” according to State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott.
The Trump administration’s deal making with authoritarian regimes has sparked a backlash in many African countries, where people complain that the White House is using secret backroom negotiations to turn Africa into a dumping ground for its unwanted.
“Apparently people are the new export commodity,” said the Southern Africa Litigation Centre, a human-rights group, in a social media post on Thursday. “Human beings are not cargo!”
Earlier this month, Rwanda said it had agreed to accept up to 250 deportees from the United States. Last month, South Sudan accepted eight U.S. deportees from Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Cuba, Vietnam and from South Sudan itself.
Also last month, five deportees – convicted criminals from Jamaica, Laos, Cuba, Yemen and Vietnam – were flown from the United States to Eswatini, where they were placed in prison. A senior official in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said they were “depraved monsters” and “uniquely barbaric.”
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The deportations to Eswatini prompted a protest from neighbouring South Africa, which said it was worried about a potential security threat. Several human-rights groups are fighting the deportations with a legal challenge, which will be heard in Eswatini’s High Court on Friday.
The groups argue that the agreement to accept the deportees was unconstitutional because its terms are secret and there was no consultation of the public or parliament. In addition, the five deportees had already served their full prison sentences in the United States, so there was no legal basis for their imprisonment in Eswatini, they said.
“There have been indications that more deportees may be brought into the country,” said Mzwandile Banele Masuku, director of the Eswatini Litigation Centre, one of the groups launching the court action, in an affidavit to the court.
“The continued disregard for both domestic and international law coupled with lack of information might cause irreparable harm in normalizing otherwise illegal conduct and compromise national stability,” he said.