Uganda has not agreed to take deportees from US, senior official says

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KAMPALA (Reuters) -A senior Ugandan official denied on Wednesday a U.S. media report that the country had agreed to take in people deported from the United States, saying it lacked the facilities to accommodate them.

Citing internal U.S. government documents, CBS News reported on Tuesday that Washington had reached deportation deals with Uganda and Honduras as part of its drive to step up expulsions of migrants to countries where they do not have citizenship. 

“To the best of my knowledge we have not reached such an agreement,” Okello Oryem, state minister for foreign affairs, told Reuters by text message. 

“We do not have the facilities and infrastructure to accommodate such illegal immigrants in Uganda.” 

Honduras’s government did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comments on the report.

President Donald Trump aims to deport millions of immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally and his administration has sought to increase removals to third countries, including by sending convicted criminals to South Sudan and Eswatini.

The CBS report said the agreements with Uganda and Honduras were based on a provision of U.S. immigration law that allows people seeking asylum to be rerouted to third countries if the U.S. government determines those nations can fairly hear their claims.  

Uganda, a U.S. ally in East Africa, also hosts nearly two million refugees and asylum-seekers, who mostly come from countries in the region such as Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Sudan.    

(Reporting by Elias Briyabarema; Additional reporting by Joan Humberto Suazo in Tegucigalpa; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Gareth Jones)