At the beginning of the summer, President Donald Trump announced plans to deport undocumented immigrants to countries other than their own.
However, according to the New York Times, the president, as part of fulfilling his campaign promise, is doing something more expansive which includes potentially “sending large groups of people to … a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, with little or no due process, even if their countries of origin are willing to take them back.”
The Germany-based broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) reported that Eswatini, Africa’s only remaining absolute monarch, and Uganda agreed to take in unwanted migrants from the U.S.
“U.S. President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration is a cornerstone of his domestic policy, forming part of his controversial campaign pledge to carry out ‘the largest deportation operation in American history,’” reported DW.
Although published reports, including those by the BBC, reported that President Trump’s “deportation pledge” drew support during his presidential campaign, “UN rights experts and human rights groups are alarmed by what is happening … .”
Their argument is that expulsion to a “third country” that is not a person’s birthplace or country of origin “could violate international law.”
In July, the U.S. transported five immigrants, who it says, “were convicted of serious crimes,” to Eswatini. This came just days after the “U.S. completed deportation of eight other immigrants to South Sudan—a country beset with political instability and a hunger crisis,” reported the London-based Guardian.
“Prior to landing in South Sudan, the deportees were diverted to a U.S. military base in Djibouti, where they had been held (and shackled) in a converted shipping container for weeks,” the outlet reported.
“More than 200 Venezuelan men that the Trump administration deported to El Salvador—most of whom had no criminal histories in the U.S.— also remain incarcerated in the country’s notorious mega-prison, Cecot, where detainees have reported facing torture.”
The foreign minister of Uganda stated that the agreement with the Trump administration is a “temporary” arrangement, as reported by The Hill. The East African country reportedly told the administration that it would not take deportees who have a criminal record or unaccompanied minors.
At the center of high-profile U.S. deportation cases is Kilmar Ábrego García, 29, a migrant from El Salvador who fled to America at age 16 to reportedly escape gang violence.
According to the Associated Press, in October 2019, an immigration judge denied his asylum request but granted him protection from being deported back to El Salvador because of a “well-founded fear” of gang persecution, according to his case. He was released; ICE did not appeal.”
Abrego Garcia checked in with ICE yearly while Homeland Security issued him a work permit, but he was still deported in March but was finally returned to the U.S. in June. He was recently detained again by ICE and is now being threatened with being deported again, this time to Uganda.
According to Yinka Adegoke, editor of the global news platform Semafor Africa, “The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has notified lawyers of Kilmar Ábrego García … that he would be deported in less than a week, with Ábrego García’s lawyers saying officials had said he would be sent to Uganda.”
The BBC reported that seven migrants deported from the U.S. arrived in Rwanda in mid-August and that they are the “first of 250 expected to be taken in by the African state under a deal reached with President Donald Trump’s administration.” Their nationalities were not disclosed.
Several media outlets have brought back memories of Africa being the historical “dumping ground” of the U.S. and Europe. A recent Al Jazeera headline, “Is Trump using Africa as a ‘dumping ground’ for criminals?” raises this question today.
“The U.S. government sees us as a criminal dumpsite and undermines Emaswati (the people of Eswatini),” Wandile Dludlu, a pro-democracy activist and deputy president of the country’s largest opposition movement, the People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), told Al Jazeera.
The New York Times suggests, “The trifecta of being sent to a third country, plus the intended scale, plus the punishment-is-the-point approach—those three things in combination, that feels very new,” said Sarah R. Sherman-Stokes, a professor at Boston University School of Law.”
Observers argue that the administration’s ultimate goal, may be to shape the behavior of other immigrants through fear. Deportation to war-torn countries, said Muneer Ahmad, a professor at Yale Law School, is a “concerted strategy’ intended ‘to both disincentivize people from coming to the United States and to incentivize self-deportation.’”
Follow Jehron Muhammad, @Africawatchfcn on X