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06-05-2025
KIGALI/ NAIROBI: Rwanda is in the early stages of talks to receive immigrants deported from the United States, Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe said on television late on Sunday.
Rwanda has in recent years positioned itself as a destination country for migrants that Western countries would like to remove, despite concerns by rights groups that Kigali does not respect some of the most fundamental human rights.
Kigali signed an agreement with Britain in 2022 to take in thousands of asylum seekers from the UK before the deal was scrapped last year by then newly-elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
“We are in discussions with the United States,” Nduhungirehe said in an interview with the state broadcaster Rwanda TV.
“It has not yet reached a stage where we can say exactly how things will proceed but the talks are ongoing…still in the early stages.”
Trump launched a sweeping crackdown on immigration and attempted to freeze the US refugee resettlement program after the start of his second term in January.
His administration has pushed aggressively to deport immigrants who are in the country illegally and other non-citizens.
The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) warned there was a risk some migrants sent to Rwanda could be returned to countries from which they had fled. Kigali denied the allegations and accused UNHCR of lying.
Last month the US deported to Rwanda a resettled Iraqi refugee whom it had long tried to extradite in response to Iraqi government claims that he worked for the Islamic State, according to a US official and an internal email.
The Supreme Court in April temporarily blocked Trump’s administration which has invoked a rarely used wartime law from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants it accused of being gang members.
The United States has deported to Rwanda a resettled Iraqi refugee who it long tried to extradite in response to Iraqi government claims that he worked for the Islamic State, according to a US official and an internal email.
Omar Abdulsattar Ameen, who was granted refugee status in the US in 2014, denied Iraqi charges that he murdered a police officer as an IS operative and a judge found in 2021 that the version of events in the case against him was “not plausible” but the administrations of Joe Biden and Donald Trump both pursued his removal from the country, accusing him of lying on his refugee application by saying he had not interacted with terrorist groups.
After the start of his second term in January, Trump launched a sweeping crackdown on immigration and attempted to freeze the US refugee resettlement program.
Ameen was sent to Rwanda earlier this month, according to the US official who spoke on condition of anonymity and the internal email seen by media.
A US State Department spokesperson declined to comment on Ameen’s case and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Rwanda’s government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Online news outlet The Handbasket, which broke the news of Ameen’s deportation, cited a leaked cable from the US embassy in Kigali as saying that Rwanda had agreed to receive additional third-country nationals under a “new removal program”.
Reuters was not able to confirm the contents of the cable or any deal between the United States and Rwanda.
The central African country has positioned itself as a destination country for migrants that Western countries would like to remove. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
