The News
Uganda looks set to receive the man at the center of one of the United States’ most controversial deportation cases, as President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration drive continues.
The US Department of Homeland Security on Friday notified lawyers of Kilmar Ábrego García, a citizen of El Salvador, that he would be deported to Uganda “in 72 hours.” Ábrego, 30, became a cause célèbre for immigration rights activists and opponents of Trump’s anti-immigration campaign after he was wrongfully deported there in March. He was returned to US custody in June and finally allowed back to his US home in Maryland last week.
Uganda this month was the latest to join the small but growing number of African countries who have reached agreements with the US government to receive “third country nationals” deported from the US. But Uganda’s foreign minister said on Aug. 21 it is a “temporary arrangement with conditions including that individuals with criminal records and unaccompanied minors will not be accepted.”
Trump officials have repeatedly claimed that Ábrego had been involved in criminal activity such as human smuggling, an allegation that Ábrego’s lawyers have denied.
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As the Trump administration ramps up deportations, it has been targeting African nations under its “safe third country” plan to reroute deportees to countries that are not their own. This month, Rwanda said it would accept up to 250 migrants from the US, while both South Sudan and Eswatini have accepted small numbers of deportees.
Uganda’s foreign minister said that his government would prefer to receive deportees from African countries. According to The New York Times, US prosecutors said that if Ábrego had pleaded guilty to his charges and agreed to stay in custody until Monday, they would have sent him to Costa Rica, a Spanish-speaking country. But his lawyers declined the offer to keep him in jail beyond Friday, and the government issued its 72-hour ultimatum to deport him to Uganda.
Step Back
Relations between the US and the government of President Yoweri Museveni are “warming up,” according to the Ugandan press, after a call last week with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the first such call under the Trump administration. Kampala had fallen out with the White House under President Joe Biden after Uganda passed a harsh anti-gay law, which saw the US and other Western partners suspend aid to the country. A State Department spokesperson said Rubio opportunities to “deepen US-Uganda cooperation on migration, reciprocal trade, and commercial ties.”
Room for Disagreement
Local human rights lawyers and activists have sued Eswatini’s government for making an opaque pact with the US government to accept third-country deportees, claim the move was unconstitutional. The case, which was due be heard at the High Court of Eswatini on Friday, has been postponed until Sep. 25, according to Reuters.
Notable
- Is Africa becoming the US dumping ground for migrants? Deporting third-country migrants to African countries was not the plan when Trump ran for the presidency in 2024.
- Who is Ábrego, the man wrongly deported to El Salvador? The case has tested the limits of Trump’s executive power.