In 2025, more African nations such as Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Eswatini enter into formal agreements with the United States to take migrants that have been deported from U.S. territory. These agreements represent a strategic shift in both U.S. immigration enforcement and foreign diplomacy, wherein deportations are redirected not necessarily to a migrant’s country of origin, but to third-party nations deemed “safe” under bilateral arrangements.
Though they are marketed as effective instruments of migration control, these agreements are attracting a lot of interest due to their humanitarian, legal, and geopolitical aspects.
Uganda, a large refugee-hosting country in Africa, recently agreed on bilateral participation in the resettlement of migrants refused by U.S. authorities. This includes those people, who, either due to legal or practical reasons, cannot be deported back to their places of origin. Rwanda said conditions will include the exclusion of individuals with criminal convictions and unaccompanied minors, as had earlier frameworks signed by Rwanda and other participants.
The policy logic of third-country resettlements
The U.S. Department of Homeland Standardization has packaged these deportation agreements as a pragmatic approach to the problem of stateless or non-rebatable immigrants. The deals enable the United States to bypass international wrangles of forced repatriation, and they open fresh avenues of pushing out migration pressure.
Nevertheless, this model resembles the prior controversial relationships between the European nations and African or Middle Eastern countries. It transfers the burden of the international protection obligations on less well-prepared countries, that already experience structural constraints, as well as a large number of displaced people. An example is in Uganda where more than 1.8 million refugees are currently housed, the highest ever in Africa.
Legal ambiguities and humanitarian risks
The evolving practice of third-country deportations raises legal challenges. In 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court supported the right of migrant deportation to the partner states without a comprehensive evaluation of the risks to the situation. This decision attracted sharp criticism by human rights organisations, who claim it compromises the principle of non-refoulement, which is a fundamental of international refugee law.
Critics of migrants who are resettled may experience a lack of due process and the prospect of living in limbo, since states receiving the migrants may lack legal status of the migrants, access to employment, and long-term integration schemes. Most of them are not citizens of the receiving country and do not have either familial or social connections with the host society. This increases the vulnerability of exploitation or statelessness or to go back to unsafe conditions.
African states’ diplomatic motivations and internal constraints
The African regimes that enter such agreements seem driven by a repeat of economic, political as well as diplomatic motives. Security partnerships, access to aid, or access to economic development funds are often tied to the deals, sometimes on condition of secrecy. In the Rwandan situation, this has been presented by the government as being part of an internationally linked effort on migration.
Nevertheless, critics observe that the real ability of these states to receive and accept the sustainability of migrants deported to them is low. Eswatini and South Sudan, both, are subject to pronounced issues of governance and infrastructures, whereas Rwanda has already been accused in terms of its opaque policies in resettlements. Such facts make the future of such deals questionable particularly when they are to be used on the vulnerable members.
Divergent positions among African countries
Not all African states have accepted such agreements. The population of most African nations is large including Nigeria: the most populous nation of Africa has publicly rejected offers to accept migrants that were deported to the U.S. on the basis of socio-economic limitations, as well as national security concerns. This contradiction is representative of greater tension among regions regarding the extent to which African states ought to participate in global migration management, especially when the causal factors of displacement are external to the country.
There is an increasingly vocal opposition to such deals in African civil society and regional advocacy networks. They claim that Africa must not be a place of choice in terms of delegation of migration policing to the richer countries. This fact also complicates the discourse and democratic oversight due to the lack of transparency of many of these agreements.
Implications for international migration governance
The implementation of these deportation arrangements contributes to a larger global trend of “offshore” migration control, in which wealthier nations engage in bilateral agreements to move asylum seekers and rejected migrants beyond their borders. Although such agreements may give a temporary respite to pressure at home, they tend to circumvent more equitable, rules-based solutions to refugee protection and burden-sharing.
At the global scale, the question may be raised about the effect of such policies on international norms. When stronger countries take the outsourcing of their migration burden to lower capacity countries as normal it may become difficult to sustain the integrity of the international protection regime. According to humanitarian organizations, such a precedent can lead to the growing popularity of comparable actions around the world, undermining the commitments set in the Global Compact on Migration and in similar agreements.
Voices warning of unintended consequences
Journalist Larry Madowo noted that while these arrangements may appear mutually beneficial on paper, they risk institutionalizing a form of “displacement dumping,” where vulnerable populations are treated as liabilities rather than individuals entitled to rights. He also underlined the difficulty African nations face in asserting equitable terms in negotiations with global superpowers.
This person has spoken on the topic highlighting concerns about these migration deals and their effects on African nations and migrants:
EXCLUSIVE: The Trump administration is “pressuring” African countries to accept deported criminals rejected by their own countries.
— Larry Madowo (@LarryMadowo) July 17, 2025
Nigeria & South Africa refused but small poor nations Eswatini & South Sudan were forced to accept pic.twitter.com/pn72IkMjgL
A defining question for migration ethics in the 2020s
The trend of deporting migrants from the U.S. to African countries presents one of the most ethically complex challenges in global migration policy today. As both U.S. and African leaders weigh diplomatic gains against humanitarian trade-offs, the lived experiences of deportees and the institutional capacity of host countries remain critical yet under-addressed dimensions.
The question facing policymakers is not merely how to manage borders efficiently, but how to do so while upholding dignity, fairness, and global responsibility. With Africa increasingly drawn into the geopolitics of migration enforcement, the stakes extend well beyond individual deals—raising questions about what kind of international system the 21st century is building for the world’s most vulnerable.
