Twelve people deported from the United States arrived in Uganda on Thursday, the Ugandan Bar Association said, marking the first known arrivals since the signing of a bilateral agreement between Uganda and the United States authorizing these transfers.
The deportees were "essentially abandoned in Uganda following an undignified, distressing and dehumanizing process ," the Bar Association said in a statement, adding that they had arrived on a private charter flight.
These deportations are part of the crackdown on immigration led by US President Donald Trump , as he seeks to deter migrants from entering the United States illegally and to deport those who have already done so, particularly those with criminal records and those who cannot be easily returned to their country of origin.
The U.S. State Department and the Department of Homeland Security have defended deportations to third countries as a way to quickly remove people who are in the United States illegally. These deportations have been the subject of several legal challenges, both in the United States and in some of the countries to which the migrants are sent.
They are controversial in part because unwanted migrants can be sent to countries with which they have no cultural ties. In August, for example, US authorities briefly considered sending Kilmar Abrego Garcia , a high-profile figure at the center of an ongoing migration dispute, to Uganda .
The United States has reached agreements with at least seven African countries to accept some migrants. These countries range from Ghana in West Africa to Eswatini in Southern Africa, to which the United States has paid $5.1 million to accept up to 160 deported individuals, according to details of the agreement released by the U.S. State Department.
It is unknown whether the Ugandan authorities received similar compensation.
The bar association denounced the fact that the deported people were at the mercy of "unidentified private interests on both sides of the Atlantic ," adding that it was seeking legal redress to end what it called "international illegality."
No details were provided on the identity of the people expelled, nor on their countries of origin.
Ugandan State Minister for Foreign Affairs Okello Oryem said he was traveling and unaware of the arrivals. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, did not respond to questions about the fate of those deported.
Mr. Oryem told the Associated Press last month that Uganda expected to receive "plane-loads" of people deported from the United States. He clarified that the agreement with the United States was signed in a pan-African spirit and out of humanitarian concern for Africans deemed undesirable in foreign lands.
Ugandan authorities had previously stated that their agreement with the United States concerned the resettlement of deported people of African origin who did not have a criminal record.
