Rwanda in Talks to Accept Deportees from the United States: A New Migration Deal in the Making

The tiny but growing middle African country of Rwanda has begun negotiations with the US regarding the return of the migrants who were deported. The country’s foreign minister Olivier Nduhungirehe has confirmed that there are negotiations taking place in a Rwanda TV interview on Sunday. The commencement of the offer is a fresh page to the fresh game that Rwanda is spearheading in international migration negotiations, already with the country signing into agreements with countries so far.

Despite the realization that the negotiations are not yet to be at the commencement stage, Nduhungirehe insisted that they are actually underway and no conclusion has been reached yet. The announcement comes when the Trump administration is ramping up its foreign visa recipients, student activists, and suspected criminal crackdown. The US government has been looking for international partners to export people abroad under a hardline immigration policy. While the terms of the agreement are still to be grasped, it is a turning point in the migration history and casts doubt on the future of deportation agreements. His predecessor Donald Trump, during his presidential campaign, had already come as far as to make deportation deeply explicit as the centerpiece of his administration’s immigration agenda. He had pledged that he would launch what he called the “largest deportation operation” in U.S. history.

During his presidency, the U.S. has already deported dozens of deportees to nations such as El Salvador and other parts of Central America. The policy has not been without controversy, however, as court challenges call into question the legality of some detentions and removals. In an NBC Meet the Press interview, Trump restated his deportation policy when he indicated that he would like to deport “some of the worst people on Earth.” And yet, despite all the braying and the fanfare the issue has generated in the big media, the numbers of deportations have declined well short of what was promised at the beginning. In February 2025, fewer immigrants were deported by the Trump administration than were removed in February last year by the Biden administration.

Rwanda’s position in international deportation arrangements is not novel. Rwanda has always been among Western nations to ship off deported criminals or asylum seekers rejected by it. In spite of the fact that the nation has been criticized by human rights activists against President Paul Kagame’s ten-year rule and his sanction of an armed uprising in neighboring Congo, Rwanda’s administration has never been open to these deportees. Rwanda made an agreement in 2022 with the United Kingdom to take in deported foreign nationals.

British and European courts suspended flights transporting deported migrants to Rwanda based on human rights grounds. The UK deportation program was modeled in part after Australia’s program that relocates deported offenders to the Pacific island of Nauru. Britain also had Rwanda as a back-up plan but even with preparations, the agreement did not exist in practice. One of the largest negatives of the UK-Rwanda agreement was the fact that it was expensive. The scheme cost Britain some 700 million pounds ($929 million) and took a very small number of people out via the scheme. The British government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer in 2024 rejected the deal flat due to its inefficiency and cost.

Starmer’s action was one of the new UK policy overall change in deportation and immigration as his government decided to tackle migration by new avenues. Rwanda is, however, a voluntary signatory to international pacts on migration. Taking the deportees from America voluntarily shows that Rwanda is willing to throw out and resolve global issues on migration. The Rwandan state has remained resolute in pursuing these intricate diplomatic negotiations even amid global backlash over human rights processes. The Rwanda-U.S. diplomatic talks persist while other European countries are also mulling similar deportation policies. Italy, with its own right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, has even inked an agreement to deport migrants to Albania once more following the trend of contracting out deportations to willing countries.

These types of settlements are most debated and pose serious moral as well as legal concerns regarding the treatment of the deportees and the participation of the states in this sort of an arrangement. It will take time to see how the talks between Rwanda and the U.S. would be going and whether or not there would be a formal agreement. The initial half of negotiations is that both are friendly but willing to have such an agreement. If the agreement is sustained, it would be a historic reversal in the United States deportation policy and enhance Rwanda’s reputation as a player in the world of migration. In Rwanda, the agreement would be viewed as an effort to project its influence globally. Since these deportation agreements are also criticized by the critics with the potential for violating human rights of the deportees, the government of Rwanda clarifies that it is sufficiently endowed with capabilities and resources to execute such delegations efficiently.

Still, if at all the agreement may be achieved by the governments, it relies not only on good intentions on their part but on whether such an arrangement can really be put in practice to extend humane treatment to the deportees.

As circumstances take their course, the globe will certainly be watching, and other countries are already looking upwards towards similar deals of deportation within the near future. Whatever the future of this specific specific deal between the United States and Rwanda will hold, it’s only to be expected that Rwanda’s contribution to such deals continues to take place yet, and the country will be the bane of the discussions of world migration within the next several years.