Rwanda’s Foreign Minister, Olivier Nduhungirehe, has revealed that the country is in the early stages of negotiations with the United States regarding the potential reception of migrants deported from American soil.
Nduhungirehe made the announcement in a televised interview late on Sunday.
“We are in discussions with the United States,” he told state broadcaster Rwanda TV. “It has not yet reached a point where we can confirm exactly how things will proceed, but the talks are ongoing… still in the early stages.”
In recent years, Rwanda has positioned itself as a destination for migrants whom Western countries seek to deport, despite ongoing criticism from human rights groups accusing the Rwandan government of failing to uphold basic freedoms.
In 2022, Kigali signed a controversial agreement with the United Kingdom to accept thousands of asylum seekers. However, that deal was eventually scrapped in 2024 following the election of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
During the second term of former U.S. President Donald Trump, the administration intensified its crackdown on immigration. It sought to freeze refugee resettlement and accelerate the deportation of undocumented immigrants and other non-citizens.
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Last month, the United States deported a resettled Iraqi refugee to Rwanda. The individual had been the subject of long-standing extradition efforts by Washington, in response to Iraqi government claims of his alleged ties to the Islamic State, according to a U.S. official and an internal government email.
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to deport a group of Venezuelan migrants accused of gang affiliation under a rarely used wartime statute.
The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has raised concerns that some migrants sent to Rwanda could be at risk of refoulement — being returned to countries they fled from. Kigali has denied these claims, accusing the UNHCR of spreading false information.
