Democratic Republic of the Congo Agrees to Take Third-Country Deportees from U.S.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) said on Sunday it has agreed to accept migrants from third countries who have been deported from the United States. The first wave of deportees is expected to arrive later this month.

The Congolese Ministry of Communications said the agreement was “temporary” and based on the DRC’s “commitment to human dignity and international solidarity.”

“This stay is not intended to become a mechanism for permanent settlement on national territory. Each situation will be subject to individual review in accordance with the laws of the Republic and national security requirements,” the statement said.

According to the ministry statement, the United States would pay all of the costs for the deportation program. Few other details were provided, including how many deportees were expected to be covered by the program.

The Associated Press (AP) noted that the Trump administration has made similar deals with “at least seven other African nations, many of them among countries hit the most by the Trump administration’s policies that have restricted trade, aid, and migration.”

“The Trump administration has spent at least $40 million to deport about 300 migrants to countries other than their own, according to a report released recently by the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” the AP added.

“Several of the African nations that have signed such deals have notoriously repressive governments and poor human rights records — including Eswatini, South Sudan, and Equatorial Guinea,” the AP added ominously.

Bloomberg News speculated the agreement to take third-country deportees was part of the DRC’s effort to gain American support for “getting Rwanda to adhere to the terms of a peace deal brokered by the Trump administration” — a deal that included major U.S. investments in mining critical minerals in the Congo.

The BBC on Monday quoted the U.S. State Department refusing to comment on “diplomatic communications with other governments,” but adding that the Trump administration remains “unwavering” in its “commitment to end illegal and mass immigration and bolster America’s border security.”

One of the other African nations with a third-country deportee agreement is Uganda. Last week, Uganda Law Society vice president Asiimwe Anthony said his group was filing suit to block a dozen incoming U.S. deportees.

“Our perspective of the matter is broader than a single act of deportation. We view it as but one gust from the ill winds of transnational repression that are blowing across our world,” Anthony said.

“This development and the attendant illegalities that accompany it are reminiscent of a dark past that the global family of humanity supposedly put behind itself in the pursuit of the ideal that every human being is born equal,” he claimed.

Timothee Mbuya, president of a non-governmental organization (NGO) called Justicia ASBL, leveled similar complaints against the DRC’s deportee program.

“Neither the Congolese population, nor the national deputies and senators, were informed. There has also been no public debate surrounding these agreements,” Mbuya told RFI.

“Congo is not a dumping ground for individuals or people who are rejected or not accepted in other countries. Our country does not have sufficient infrastructure to accommodate this type of person,” he said, hinting at the DRC’s problem with internally displaced persons (IDPs) driven from their homes by the insurgency in the Eastern Congo.