Rwanda agreed to accept up to 250 deportees from the United States under the Trump administration’s expanding third-country deportation program, its government said Tuesday.
The U.S. is seeking more deals with African countries to take deportees under President Donald Trump’s plans to expel people who he says entered the U.S. illegally and are “the worst of the worst.”
Rwanda government spokesperson Yolande Makolo confirmed the details in an email to The Associated Press. She didn’t immediately give a timeline for the deportations.
The U.S. has already sent 13 immigrants to two other African nations, South Sudan and Eswatini. It has also deported hundreds of Venezuelans and others to Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama.
The Trump administration described the eight men sent to South Sudan and the five men sent to Eswatini last month as dangerous criminals who had been convicted of crimes in the U.S. Both those countries have declined to give details of their deals with the U.S.
Rwanda, an East African nation of around 15 million people, struck a deal in 2022 with the U.K. to accept migrants who had arrived in the U.K. to seek asylum. Under the proposed deal, their claims would have been processed in Rwanda and, if successful, they would have stayed there.
The contentious agreement was criticized by rights groups and others as being unethical and unworkable and was ultimately scrapped, with Britain’s Supreme Court ruling in 2023 that it was unlawful.
Rwanda said in May it was in negotiations with the U.S. over a deportation agreement.
