KAMPALA. The government of Uganda has confirmed that it has an agreement with United States of America to host deported migrants who have been rejected by many countries .
In a statement on Thursday , Mr Vincent Waiswa Bagiire the permanent secretary Ministry of Foreign Affairs said an agreement for cooperation in the examination of protection requests was concluded .
According to Mr Bagiire , the agreement is in respect of the Third Country Nationals who may not be granted asylum in the US ,but are reluctant to or may have concerns about returning to their countries of origin .
“This is a temporary arrangement with conditions including that individuals with criminal records and unaccompanied minors will not be accepted. Uganda also prefers that individuals from African countries shall be the ones transferred to Uganda. The two parties are working out the detailed modalities on how the agreement shall be implemented,” he said in a three-paragraph statement .However ,it’s not yet clear how many deportees Uganda would ultimately host under the arrangement with the U.S. government.
This confirmation ends speculations which first appeared on CBS News in US early this week claiming it had obtained internal US government documents showing Uganda is among the countries President Trump’s administration has successfully persuaded to aid its crackdown on illegal immigration by accepting deportations of migrants who are not their own citizens.
Uganda joins other countries that have struck a deal with US, including Honduras, Eswatini, and South Sudan. “The government of Honduras agreed to a relatively small number of deportations — just several hundred over two years — but the documents indicate it could decide to accept more,” CBS said in an article published on Tuesday, August 19, 2025.
“Both agreements are based on a “safe third country” provision of U.S. immigration law that allows officials to reroute asylum-seekers to countries that are not their own if the U.S. government makes a determination that those nations can fairly hear their claims for humanitarian protection”.The Government of Uganda and the US embassy in Uganda had not commented on the allegations by press time.
UN warns against deportations However, United Nations experts decried the US resumption of migrant deportations to third countries, including to war-torn South Sudan, stressing Washington’s obligation to ensure it is not sending people into harm’s way.
The experts, who are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council but who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations, voiced alarm at the rights implications of a recent Supreme Court ruling allowing US President Donald Trump’s administration to go ahead with deportations of foreign nationals to countries other than their own, according to AFP.
” International law is clear that no one shall be sent anywhere where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be in danger of being subjected to … torture, enforced disappearance or arbitrary deprivation of life,” 11 independent UN rights experts said in a statement. Following the ruling, a group of eight migrants deported from the United States and stranded for weeks at a military base in Djibouti arrived in South Sudan in early July 2025.
“To protect people from torture and other prohibited cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, enforced disappearances, and risks to life, they must be given an opportunity to express their objections to removal in a legally supervised procedure,” said the experts, including the UN special rapporteurs on torture and on the rights of migrants.
But they warned that “the US’ expedited removal procedure could allow people to be taken to a country other than their own in as little as a single day, without an immigration court hearing or other appearance before a judge”. The experts stressed that assessments of potential dangers faced by deportees “must be individual as well as country-specific”.
They highlighted that the United States had agreed to adhere to international obligations to prevent so-called refoulement, including under the Convention Against Torture. The experts called on Washington “to refrain from any further removals to third countries, to ensure effective access to legal assistance for those facing deportation, and (for) all such procedures to be subject to independent judicial oversight”.