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Uganda has agreed to take in nationals from third countries who are denied asylum in the United States but do not wish to return to their countries of origin, Kampala’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced.
The ministry said on Today that the agreement is conditional: those seeking asylum must not have criminal records and cannot be unaccompanied minors. It added that details of the deal are still being finalized.
US President Donald Trump has pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, with his administration seeking to increase removals to third countries. This includes deporting convicted criminals to South Sudan and the southern African kingdom of Eswatini.
Uganda, which already hosts about 1.7 million refugees—the largest refugee population in Africa, according to the United Nations—is the latest East African country to announce such a deal with Washington, joining Rwanda and South Sudan.
“This is a temporary arrangement with conditions, including that individuals with criminal records and unaccompanied minors will not be accepted,” Vincent Bagiire Waiswa, the ministry’s permanent secretary, said in a statement.
Waiswa Bagiire
He also emphasized Uganda’s preference that “individuals from African countries shall be the ones transferred to Uganda.” “The two parties are working out the detailed modalities of how the agreement shall be implemented,” he added. It was not immediately clear if the agreement had been formally signed, but the ministry’s statement said it had been “concluded.”
The announcement came a day after a senior Ugandan official denied media reports that the country had agreed to take in people deported from the US, saying Uganda lacked the facilities to accommodate them.
Foreign Affairs Minister Henry Okello Oryem told Torch Media Africa that while Uganda has a benevolent refugee policy, there are limits. “We are talking about cartels—people who are unwanted in their own countries. How can we integrate them into local communities in Uganda?” he asked.
He explained that the government was in discussions with Washington about “visas, tariffs, sanctions, and related issues, not accepting illegal aliens from the US. That would be unfair to Ugandans.”
The UN’s refugee agency notes that Uganda has a “progressive refugee policy, maintaining an open-door approach to asylum.”
However, it reported a “significant” increase in arrivals in 2024, primarily due to Sudan’s civil war, as well as ongoing unrest in South Sudan and the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has taken several steps to speed up deportations of undocumented migrants to third countries.
In July, the US deported five men with criminal records to Eswatini and sent eight more to South Sudan.
Trump’s administration also deported hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador, where they were held in a high-security prison under poor conditions before being sent back to Venezuela.
Rights experts have warned that these deportations risk violating international law by sending people to countries where they may face torture, abduction, or other abuses.
Torch Media Africa
