The United States is preparing to deport a 78-year-old retired pastor to Uganda, a country in East Africa near the center of the Ebola outbreak. The pastor also claims to be the target of the country’s authoritarian government.
Edward Nalwamba came to the US from Uganda in 2002 and had been living and working in Colorado while under an “order of supervision,” which is when someone has a deportation order but cannot be immediately removed from the country. This order was revoked in September 2025, his lawyers say, and he has been detained ever since. Nalwamba is set to be deported on Tuesday.
According to his attorney and one of his friends, Nalwamba’s health has declined precipitously in the nine months he has been in immigration detention, adding to concerns about deporting him to an outbreak zone.
Uganda, and its neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are at the epicenter of the latest Ebola outbreak, which has killed more than 300 people. Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued a travel health notice for Uganda, encouraging travelers to practice “enhanced precautions.” It’s not clear how many immigrants the US is deporting to Uganda at this time.
Nalwamba’s case falls at the intersection of several of the major changes ushered in by President Donald Trump’s second administration. Since January 2025, the US government has strangled foreign assistance, killing off the US Agency for International Development (USAID) almost entirely. Meanwhile, it has pumped billions of dollars into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and immigration operations.
Nalwamba first arrived in the US on a tourist visa for a religious conference. In 2001, during Uganda’s presidential elections, Nalwamba claims he was one of several people in his town taken from their homes in the middle of the night and interrogated by armed security forces about his relationship to the political opposition, according to court documents filed in 2010. Nalwamba had refused to instruct members of his church to vote for the country’s president, Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, and whose government has continued to target members of the political opposition as recently as earlier this year.
During the religious conference, he says, people that Nalwamba knew back in Uganda called him to warn him that political conditions in the country were deteriorating. While he was in the US, Nalwamba received a fax containing threats that made him fear returning home. Nalwamba decided to stay in the US and apply for asylum.
“He feared and has feared all the way up until the present time that if he returns to Uganda, he will be imprisoned or tortured or killed, and the Ugandan authorities have come looking for him several times over the years,” says Joy Athanasiou, the immigration attorney representing Nalwamba.
Athanasiou claims that Nalwamba had issues with his first immigration attorney, who “disappeared without filing the application.” This, and other issues, complicated his application for asylum, and though it was denied, he was issued the “stay of removal.” Nalwamba was arrested on September 18, 2025 and has been held at a detention facility in Aurora, Colorado that is run by GEO Group, a private prison company.
Once in detention, Athanasiou says that Nalwamba’s possessions were confiscated, including paperwork and documentation. “He believes some of his immigration papers were in there,” she says. Additionally, because Athanasiou did not represent Nalwamba in his earlier immigration cases, she doesn’t have access to some of his earlier case records and documentation. “You have to file a formal request for a copy of the client’s file through the Freedom of Information Act,” she says. A previous attorney filed for Nalwamba’s records, but was only given a “fraction of a file” while other requests are still pending. “This has been a big problem with the government under the current administration,” says Athanasiou.
The White House, the DHS, and the CDC did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson from GEO Group referred WIRED to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is under DHS, for comment.
While in detention, Nalwamba’s health has rapidly declined. Reverend Philip Eberhart, a pastor at Resurrection Anglican Fellowship in Greenwood Village, Colorado where Nalwamba worked for fifteen years before retiring, says he has been visiting Nalwamba at the detention facility regularly and has been alarmed at how much Nalwamba has deteriorated. “I was just with him last Tuesday,” says Eberhart. “When he was picked up, he was very active. I mean, he was doing stuff that a 50-year-old would be doing. Now he’s in a wheelchair.”
In December, Athanasiou says, Nalwamba went to GEO’s infirmary after being ill for several weeks. “We finally got copies of his blood work that there were a few abnormalities that would be indicative of malnourishment, and he had pneumonia, which he didn’t even know,” she says, noting that detention center staff did not inform Nalwamba of his pneumonia diagnosis.
Now, Nalwamba is sick again, his attorney says. “He has an active virus, he’s had the chills, he’s been super weak, he has a really disturbing cough that has gone into his chest, and he talks about rib pain,” says Athanasiou. “He put in a second request for a clinic visit last Friday, has not been seen, and they want to deport him right now to a place that has an Ebola outbreak right now.”
The outbreak has been exacerbated due to cuts to US foreign aid cuts, leaving many local organizations without the funding necessary to employ local staff or afford protective equipment.
“I’m not anti-ICE. I believe that we need to be taking on immigrants that are here illegally. And Edward has been trying to do that legally now for 20 years, 25 years,” says Eberhart. “He’s not a criminal in any way, shape or form, not even a hint of criminality in it, no record, no nothing…[in Uganda] he’ll be picked up by soldiers or and we probably won’t hear from him again.”
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