Rwanda is in talks with the Trump administration to take in migrants deported from the United States, the central African nation’s foreign minister said late Sunday.
It was unclear if a deal would involve migrants who had already been deported or those who will be in the future, but any agreement could make Rwanda the first African country to enter into such an accord with the United States.
Rwanda’s foreign minister, Olivier J.P. Nduhungirehe, said on Sunday that his country’s government was in “early stage” talks about receiving third-country deportees from the United States.
“It is true that we are in discussions with the United States,” Mr. Nduhungirehe said in an interview with Rwanda TV, the state broadcaster. “These talks are still ongoing, and it would be premature to conclude how they will unfold,” he added.
Rwanda’s government did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for the State Department declined to discuss details of the talks, but said: “Ongoing engagement with foreign governments is vital to deterring illegal and mass migration and securing our borders.”
Rwanda has long positioned itself as a partner to Western nations seeking to curb migration, offering to provide asylum to migrants or house them as they await resettlement elsewhere, sometimes in return for payment. Mr. Nduhungirehe did not say whether Rwanda would be paid for the agreement.
Critics say that sending asylum seekers to Rwanda is unsafe, citing the country’s poor record on human rights, its limited resources and the authorities’ previous intimidation and surveillance of migrants and refugees.
The Trump administration has deployed a number of hard-line tactics to curb migration, including deporting individuals on well-publicized flights. Mr. Trump invoked a centuries-old law in March to deport hundreds of alleged gang members from Venezuela to El Salvador, even as a federal judge sought to halt the flights. Washington has been looking for more countries willing to take in people expelled from the United States.
The Trump administration has also been asking countries to take back their own citizens who have been deported from the United States, and taking punitive measures against those nations that refuse to do so. In early April, Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked visas for all South Sudanese nationals amid a dispute over the East African country’s failure to accept a deported migrant.
If Rwanda agrees to a deal with the Trump administration, it would be the African country’s latest agreement to take in migrants.
The small, landlocked nation hosts hundreds of African refugees from Libya awaiting resettlement in a joint partnership with the United Nations refugee agency. It has also signed a deal with Denmark to improve cooperation on asylum and migration, and it entered into a secretive partnership with Israel to receive deported African migrants.
Rwanda agreed to a deal with Britain to receive third-country asylum seekers in 2022 in a contentious plan that was later deemed unlawful by the British Supreme Court. Last year, the British government passed legislation to override the court’s decision and declare Rwanda a “safe country.”
Only four people voluntarily left for Rwanda under the plan, and when the Conservatives lost the general election last July, the new Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer scrapped the deal. The program cost British taxpayers 715 million pounds, or about $949 million, with some 290 million pounds going to Rwanda. Rwanda’s government has said it will not repay the money.
The discussions between Rwanda and the United States were first reported by The Handbasket and coincide with a U.S. effort to mediate a peace deal in the war between Rwanda and neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Handbasket and Reuters news agency also reported that the United States deported an Iraqi refugee, Omar Abdulsattar Ameen, to Rwanda. Mr. Nduhungirehe did not refer to that case during his interview on Rwanda TV.
Arafat Mugabo contributed reporting.
