US reaches deportation deals with Honduras, Uganda
The United States has reached bilateral deportation agreements with Honduras and Uganda as part of efforts to curb illegal immigration, according to documents obtained by CBS, News.Az reports.
The documents indicate Uganda in East Africa recently agreed to accept deportees from the U.S. who hail from other countries on the continent, as long as they don't have criminal histories. It's unclear how many deportees Uganda would ultimately accept under the arrangement with the U.S. government.
Honduras' government has also agreed to receive deportees from other Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, including families traveling with children, the documents show. The government of Honduras agreed to a relatively small number of deportations — just several hundred over two years — but the documents indicate it could decide to accept more.
Both agreements are based on a "safe third country" provision of U.S. immigration law that allows officials to reroute asylum-seekers to countries that are not their own if the U.S. government makes a determination that those nations can fairly hear their claims for humanitarian protection.
The two bilateral deals outlined in the internal documents are part of a large-scale diplomatic effort that President Trump's administration has staged to strike deportation arrangements with nations across several continents, including those with problematic human rights records. The administration has argued those agreements are key to its mass deportation campaign, since there are some migrants who can't easily be deported to their home countries because of strained diplomatic relations or other reasons.
At least a dozen countries have already accepted or agreed to accept deportees from other nations since the second Trump administration took office, and U.S. officials have been aggressively courting other governments. Internal government documents show the Trump administration has also asked countries like Ecuador and Spain to receive these so-called third country deportees from the U.S.
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