A flight carrying deportees from the US landed in Uganda on Tuesday, marking the first deportation under a third-country agreement signed by Kampala and Washington in August. According to a senior Ugandan official, the deportees would remain in Uganda temporarily as a "transition phase" before potentially being sent to other destinations. The Uganda Law Society confirmed 12 people were on the flight but provided no further details, including their nationalities. This follows reports that Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, Rwanda and South Sudan have accepted deportees from countries such as Cuba, Jamaica, Yemen, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar. The Ugandan legal body announced plans to challenge the deportations in local and regional courts, calling the process "undignified, harrowing and dehumanising" and accusing both governments of treating the deportees as "chattel." Yasmeen Hibrawi, a US embassy counsellor in Kampala, stated all deportations were conducted "in full cooperation" with Uganda but declined to disclose specifics, citing privacy concerns. Uganda's foreign affairs minister, Oryem Okello, suggested the US might be consolidating flights to improve efficiency, noting that single or small groups of deportees were impractical. He also hinted the US could be conducting a cost analysis before proceeding with further flights. Uganda currently hosts nearly two million refugees and asylum seekers, primarily from neighbouring countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan.
When Uganda's foreign minister says the US is likely crunching numbers to avoid sending "one, two people at a time," he is admitting Washington is outsourcing deportations not because it lacks options but because it is shopping for the cheapest bulk deal. The silence on whether Washington pays Uganda—while Eswatini already secured $5.1m for 160 deportees—reveals the real currency is cash, not compassion. The Ugandan Law Society's blunt charge that the deportees are treated as chattel exposes a system where human beings are rerouted like freight, with African states becoming the final stop on a global deportation conveyor belt.
