Uganda receives first US deportation flight under third-country agreement | US immigration

As the Donald Trump administration continues its strategy of deporting immigrants to countries with which it has no ties, a plane carrying people deported from the USA landed in Uganda.

An unnamed senior Ugandan government official told Reuters that the deported people would remain in the east African country as a “transitional phase for potential transmission to other countries.”

Condemning the arrivals, the Uganda Law Society said that 12 people were on the plane within the scope of the agreement that Uganda signed with the USA in August. No other details about those deported, including their nationalities, have been made public.

The US has already deported dozens of people to third countries. Other African countries that have accepted or agreed to accept deportees include Eswatini, Ghana, Rwanda and South Sudan, which have accepted people from as far away as Cuba, Jamaica, Yemen, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar.

The Uganda Law Society said it would file legal challenges against the deportations in Ugandan and district courts. He criticized “an undignified, distressing and dehumanizing process.” [the deported people] Little more than a security for the benefit of special interests on both sides of the Atlantic.

Yasmeen Hibrawi, a public relations consultant at the US embassy in Kampala, said all deportations were carried out “in full cooperation with the government of Uganda.”

Hibrawi said: “But we do not discuss the details of our private diplomatic communications and cannot discuss the details of their cases for privacy reasons.”

In August, Uganda said it had reached an agreement with the United States to accept people from third countries who may not be eligible for asylum in the United States but are “reluctant” to be sent back to their home countries.

IT in question It did not accept people with criminal records or unaccompanied minors and did not specify whether the United States was paying. Uganda currently hosts approximately 2 million refugees and asylum seekers, most of whom come from other east African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan.

Hundreds of asylum seekers have been ordered deported to Uganda, according to the Associated Press. Ugandan foreign minister Oryem Okello said before the deportation plane arrived that no asylum seekers had yet been sent by the United States.

He said the US “may be doing a cost analysis” and trying to avoid flights with only a few people on board. Okello added: “You can’t do it with one, two people at a time. Aircraft loadings – that’s the most efficient way.”

The US has agreed to pay Eswatini $5.1 million (£3.8 million) to accept up to 160 third-country nationals. Reuters. Five people were deported to the southern African country by the United States in July, and 10 were deported in October. Two of them were later repatriated to Jamaica and Cambodia respectively, while the rest remained in a maximum security prison.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained more than 63,000 people in the United States as of March 12. government data. Toddlers and newborn babies were among the 5,600 people incarcerated at an ICE detention center in Dilley, Texas, between April 2025 and February 2026, according to a report. report By the non-profit organizations Human Rights First and Raices.