Rwanda in talks with Trump administration to receive migrants

Nairobi — Rwanda is in the early stages of talks to receive immigrants deported from the US, according to Rwandan foreign minister Olivier Nduhungirehe.

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 on Sunday.

“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 programme 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 noncitizens.

The UK 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.

Reuters