When the British government asked some African countries if they would accept deported migrants in 2021, it got a cold shoulder from all but Rwanda.
When the Trump administration came knocking with a similar request to African nations this year, the response was much different.
Ghana, Rwanda, South Sudan and Eswatini have all received U.S. deportees who are from third countries under bilateral agreements with the Trump administration. Uganda’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said last month that it had also struck a temporary arrangement with the United States.
Each country has its own reasons for making a deal, but experts said that their willingness reflected the calculations African nations have made as they engage with an administration that appears quick to reward those who do its bidding and punish those who resist.
The administration’s readiness to multiply tariffs on African goods and impose onerous visa restrictions has also given it leverage when asking countries to take deportees, experts say.
“Countries see it as an opportunity to get on the right side of the Trump administration,” Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow in the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in an interview. “The administration has made clear that this is something that it values.”
The deals are part of a drive by the administration to deport migrants en masse, including, crucially, to countries where they are not citizens. Countries including El Salvador, Guatemala and Kosovo have signed similar temporary agreements.
The arrangements have prompted legal battles in the United States and have been criticized as cruel, because the deportees may be sent to continents where they have no connections and countries where conditions are harsh.
Human rights groups in Africa have also argued that the deals violate commitments to uphold the international convention on torture and the principle that no refugee should be sent back to a country where they might face harm.
The agreement to take migrants from Britain to Rwanda was deemed a failure and abandoned last year after years of legal battles.
With the Trump administration, the government in Kigali, which has boosted its international profile in part through a readiness to comply with Western security demands, has again agreed to receive deportees.
Of all the African countries that have responded to the Trump administration’s appeal, Ghana appears to have made the most noticeable shift. In 2022, the government categorically denied it had agreed to participate in the British plan.
But this month, the new government of President John Mahama took in 14 migrants, framing its decision as an act of African solidarity with people whose rights were being violated in the United States. The government had received no payment and only West Africans had been accepted, according to the foreign minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa.
“We are only helping our fellow brothers and sisters,” Mr. Okudzeto Ablakwa told a news conference in the Ghanaian capital, Accra, this week. Lawyers for the migrants have since sued the Ghanaian authorities.
Assessing why the government made its decision, Franklin Cudjoe, the head of the IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, one of Ghana’s leading think tanks, said it could be related to a State Department pilot program announced last month to impose visa bonds of up to $15,000 on certain visitors to the United States.
Malawi and Zambia are the only countries named in the program and Ghana is keen to ensure that it is not at risk of possible inclusion, Mr. Cudjoe said in an interview.
Whatever the motivation, African governments should not engage in the agreements, according to Allan Ngari of Human Rights Watch, who noted that one of the deportees to Ghana had been returned to Gambia this week even though he could face persecution because he is bisexual.
“African governments should not trade in people for cash or political concessions,” Mr. Ngari said in an interview.
The government of Eswatini took in five migrants from third countries in July but has said they will be sent home. The migrants are being held in prison, according to a human rights lawyer, Sibusiso Nhlabatsi, who said the government was contesting his right to visit them.
“This case has elements of what we call kidnapping or human trafficking, where you move people from one state or another without their consent,” Mr. Nhlabatsi said in an interview.
The deal with South Sudan, Africa’s newest country, shows how a government has apparently responded to U.S. pressure. In April, the Trump administration revoked visas for all South Sudanese passport holders in the United States. At the time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the country had refused to accept citizens being deported by the administration.
In July, eight men — from countries including Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar — arrived in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, and one, a Mexican, has been voluntarily repatriated, according to Edmund Yakani, director of the country’s Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, which works to fight corruption.
“The goal for South Sudan is to improve relations with the U.S.,” said Mr. Yakani.
Ruth Maclean in Dakar and Lizzie Dearden in London contributed reporting
Matthew Mpoke Bigg is a London-based reporter on the Live team at The Times, which covers breaking and developing news.
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