WASHINGTON – The US has reached bilateral deportation agreements with Honduras and Uganda as part of its crackdown on illegal immigration, according documents obtained by the BBC’s US partner CBS.
Uganda has agreed to take an unclear number of African and Asian migrants who had claimed asylum on the US-Mexico border, while Honduras will receive several hundred deported people from Spanish-speaking countries, CBS reports.
The move is part of an attempt by Donald Trump’s administration to get more countries to accept deported migrants who are not their own citizens.
Human rights campaigners have condemned the policy, saying migrants face the risk of being sent to countries where they could be harmed.
Under the agreement, Uganda has agreed to accept deported migrants as long as they do not have criminal histories, but it is unclear how many the country would ultimately take, according to CBS.
Honduras agreed to receive migrants over two years, including families travelling with children, but documents suggest it could decide to accept more.
Both deals are part of the Trump administration’s broader push for deportation arrangements with countries on several continents – including those with controversial human rights records.
So far, at least a dozen nations have agreed to accept deported migrants from other countries.
Last week, the US State Department announced it had signed a ‘safe third- country’ agreement with Paraguay to ‘share the burden of managing illegal immigration’.
The White House has also been actively courting several African nations, with Rwanda saying earlier this month it will take up to 250 migrants from the US.
A condition of the deal specifies that Rwanda would have ‘the ability to approve each individual proposed for resettlement’, a government spokesperson told the BBC.
Rwanda has previously been criticised for its human rights record, including the risk that those sent to the East African nation could be deported again to countries where they may face danger. Earlier this year, Panama and Costa Rica agreed to take in several hundred African and Asian migrants from the US.
Government documents show the Trump administration has also approached countries like Ecuador and Spain to receive deported migrants, CBS reported.
Since the start of his second term, Trump has embarked on sweeping efforts to remove undocumented migrants – a key election promise that drew mass support during this campaign.
In June, the US Supreme Court cleared the way for Trump to resume deportations of migrants to countries other than their homeland, without giving them the chance to raise the risks they might face.
At the time, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the majority ruling, calling the decision ‘a gross abuse’.
UN rights experts and human rights groups have also argued that these removals to a nation that is not the migrant’s place of origin could violate international law.
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