The Rwandan government has said it would accept up to 250 migrants from the US under a deal agreed with Washington but gave no details on who could be included.
The Trump administration’s deportation drive has included negotiating arrangements to send people to third countries, among them South Sudan and Eswatini.
The deal announced on Tuesday follows a cancelled agreement with Britain under which Rwanda would have received asylum seekers arriving in the UK on small boats. That deal was scrapped after the Conservative government that negotiated it lost last year’s general election.
“Rwanda has agreed with the United States to accept up to 250 migrants,” a government spokesperson, Yolande Makolo, told AFP.
She said Rwanda would maintain “the ability to approve each individual proposed for resettlement”.
Makolo said the government had agreed to the scheme with Washington because “nearly every Rwandan family has experienced the hardships of displacement”.
Those who arrive in Rwanda will be provided with training, healthcare and accommodation, she added.
No further information was given, including any indication of a timeline, with Makolo saying that Rwanda “will provide more details once these have been worked out”.
Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has taken a number of actions aimed at speeding up deportations of undocumented migrants to countries that are not their own.
His administration has defended third-country deportations as necessary, since the home nations of some of those targeted for removal sometimes refuse to accept them.
But rights experts have warned that the deportations risk breaking international law by sending people to countries where they face the risk of torture, abduction and other abuses.
South Sudan – which is teetering on the edge of renewed conflict – accepted eight people from the US in July. Its government said the group, only one of whom is South Sudanese, were in its care.
Five other migrants labelled criminals by the US were flown to Eswatini in July and incarcerated. The government later said they would be repatriated to their own countries.
Rwanda, which is in Africa’s Great Lakes region, is home to 13 million people. Its government claims it is one of the most stable countries on the continent and it has drawn praise for its modern infrastructure.
However, the migrant agreement with the UK government drew criticism from rights groups and faced a long-running legal challenge.
President Paul Kagame’s government has frequently been accused of rampant human rights violations and crushing political dissent and press freedoms.
It has also come under pressure over its role in the violence roiling the east of neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In June, the DRC and Rwanda signed a peace agreement aimed at ending decades of conflict in eastern DRC, where there were fresh clashes this year when the M23 armed group, backed by Rwandan troops, captured two major cities.
