Donald Trump’s administration is in the “early stages” of diplomatic talks with Rwanda aimed at using the country as an offshore site to house migrants deported from the US, the country’s foreign minister said.
Olivier J.P. Nduhungirehe made the news during an interview on Rwandan state television, and his remarks were first reported by The New York Times. The US over time has used a number of countries, including most recently El Salvador, as stopover locations to house deportees who are later transferred to their home countries or apply for asylum elsewhere.
Rwanda’s acceptance of US deportees would be of note especially given that the UK abandoned plans to do the same after a massive outcry over the humanitarian conditions under which migrants would be housed.
Now, Trump could be on the verge of resurrecting that plan as he continues to deal with the logistics of America’s immigration system — realities which are causing his administration, so far, to lag behind the deportation targets he vowed to meet on the campaign trail. Current analyses indicate that the administration is set to deport roughly 500,000 people this year, a drop from 2024.
The Independent reached out to the State Department for comment on Mr Nduhungirehe’s remark to Rwandan state TV — a spokesperson responded that the agency does not “discuss the details of our diplomatic communications with other governments” but added that such conversations were “vital to deterring illegal and mass migration and securing our borders.”
“U.S. partners and regional leaders are working closely with us to end the crisis of illegal and mass migration,” the agency spokesperson said.
CBS News separately reported that the Trump administration has approached other foreign governments with similar overtures, including Angola and Equatorial Guinea.
In order for the United States to deport a noncitizen, the federal government must reach an arrangement of some kind with the government of the citizen’s home country or another nation willing to provide temporary custody. In most cases, the US has those agreements outstanding — in the case of nations with which the US has frostier ties, finalizing the details of deportation flights can take much longer. Some countries refuse to accept deportees altogether.
Breaking from previous administrations, the second Trump presidency has leaned on the State Department to streamline those efforts. A report from the Migration Policy Institute in April described the Trump administration as having “situated immigration enforcement at the heart of its dealings with Mexico, Canada, and other countries in the Western Hemisphere and beyond, marking a sharp shift in U.S. foreign policy.”
At the same time, the administration hasn’t yet shown the same understanding of the benefits of pursuing those same kinds of relationships domestically. While embracing extremist hardline rhetoric on migration and demonizing both individual migrant cases and their Democratic critics, the White House has spurned any notion of forging alliances with local municipality leaders — many of whom are Democrats — to actually increase the effectiveness of immigration enforcement.
The administration has also dug in its heels over the issue of focusing deportations on those with criminal backgrounds, a key promise Trump made during the election cycle. Rather than address that criticism, White House officials have shifted back and forth between smearing individuals without criminal records as gang members and terrorists, while accusing Democrats of supporting those gangs.
The president’s popularity on the issue of immigration has plummeted since he took office, a devastating development for Republicans given that it was one of two issues, the other being the economy, where he enjoyed a clear advantage over his Democratic critics in terms of voter trust.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll published at the end of April found that nearly two thirds of Americans said uncontrolled migration was an issue of concern for them.
Yet the share of respondents who approved of Trump’s actions was just 45 percent, lower than the 46 percent opposed to them. The president previously enjoyed a double-digit advantage on this issue in Reuters polling taken over the final two weeks of the election.
El Salvador’s housing of noncitizens from Venezuela has in particular become an area of controversy for the administration given that in some cases men with no criminal backgrounds have been sent abroad to be housed in the country’s notorious CECOT megaprison, the site of many alleged rights violations.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has also faced blowback for deporting several young children — all with U.S. citizenship — including one suffering from cancer.
