US Top Diplomat Speaks to M7 over Plans to Deport US Migrants to Uganda

Just two days after it emerged that Uganda had accepted to receive undocumented migrants deported from the United States of America, the State Department announced that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had spoken to President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni over this matter and others. 

In a statement by the Principal Deputy Spokesperson Tommy Pigott of the United States State Department, Rubio spoke with Museveni, “to discuss opportunities to deepen US, Uganda cooperation on migration, reciprocal trade, and commercial ties. The brief statement also said Rubio, “thanked Uganda for providing a model of regional stability including its valuable contributions to peacekeeping in East Africa.” 

On Wednesday, CBS News Network in the United States reported that Uganda agreed to take in an unspecified number of undocumented immigrants from the US, provided they have no criminal record. These migrants are those who would have applied for asylum at the Mexico/US border, particularly those from Africa and Asia. Uganda joins South Sudan and Rwanda in the region, agreeing to take in US undocumented immigrants. 

Since starting his second term in January, US President Donald John Trump has made the deportation of undocumented migrants in his country the foundation of his second and final term. Trump hopes to deport over 10million migrants in the next four years of his presidency. Deporting migrants to countries other than their own has been criticised by many human rights groups, terming it inhumane. 

Unfazed, trumps continue to talk to other countries around the world to accept these migrants. In return, Trump has given financial incentives such as reducing tariffs to countries that accept his entreaties. This is going to be the second time that Uganda is accepting US migrants, the first being in 2020 when it accepted Afghans who had cooperated with the US in its 20-year war in that country.

When Kabul fell to the Taliban again, the US withdrew many of the people it had worked with, temporarily sheltering them in third countries as it worked on their resettlement plan. It’s not known when these Afghans left Uganda, if at all or when these new migrants will leave or whether their stay is permanent. The terms of the agreement are also still not yet public.