African country’s foreign ministry says the two states are working on the details of a deal over deportees

Uganda has reached an agreement with the US to take in deportees from third countries who may not get asylum but are “reluctant” to go back to their own countries, according to Uganda’s foreign ministry.

The country will not accept people with criminal records or unaccompanied minors under the temporary arrangement, ​​the Ugandan foreign ministry’s permanent secretary said in a statement. He did not say whether Uganda was receiving any payment or other benefits and how many deportees it would accept.

“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,” Bagiire Vincent Waiswa said.

The government of the east African country is the latest to strike a deal with the US, which is seeking to expel millions of undocumented migrants, asylum seekers and foreigners with criminal convictions or more minor legal infractions on their record.

In July, five migrants from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Yemen and Cuba, who Washington said had been convicted of serious crimes, were flown to Eswatini, where they are now in a high security prison. The deportations are being challenged by a group of Swazi and southern African NGOs, with a high court hearing scheduled for Friday.

Also in July, eight men from various countries were deported by the US to South Sudan, via Djibouti, where they were held for weeks in a shipping container. Meanwhile, more than 250 Venezuelans were repatriated to Venezuela after being sent to a notorious El Salvador prison in March without due process.

Meanwhile, Rwanda has said it will take in 250 people deported by the US. The Rwandan government spokesperson Yolande Makolo told the BBC they would be given “workforce training, health care and accommodation to jump start their lives in Rwanda”.

Uganda is a US ally and has been ruled by the 80-year-old president, Yoweri Museveni, for almost 40 years. His political opponents are regularly sent to jail.

On Wednesday, a Ugandan official denied that it had reached a deal with the US, saying that they did not have the facilities and infrastructure to accommodate immigrants. The denial followed a CBS News story on Tuesday that cited internal government documents, reporting that the White House had reached deportation deals with Honduras and Uganda.

Godwin Toko, the deputy executive director of Agora, a Ugandan thinktank that promotes democracy and human rights said: “Uganda doesn’t have the cards, economically … in terms of military power or in any other sense. But Uganda can then play a good boy for the US and this is one of the avenues that the Ugandan government uses to gain leverage.”

Uganda has a record of accepting migrants and asylum seekers deported by other countries. Between 2015 and 2018, Israel sent about 1,700 Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers to the country.

Uganda hosts nearly 2 million refugees and asylum seekers, most from other east African countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan.

However, while Uganda’s government and citizens are known for being welcoming to foreigners, Toko said that it has a bad track record of protecting people who have fled for political reasons.

He said: “God forbid that among the people being brought to Uganda there is a Kenyan dissident. I think Uganda will have no problem whatsoever handing that dissident over to the Kenyan government the next day. Or a South Sudanese dissident or any country that has a good relationship with Uganda.”

Source: www.theguardian.com