Congo Agrees to Accept US-Deported Migrants With No Ties to the Country

Congo Agrees to Accept US-Deported Migrants With No Ties to the Country

Quick Reads

• The Democratic Republic of Congo confirmed on Sunday, April 5, that it will begin receiving migrants deported from the United States who are not Congolese nationals, starting this month.
• The DRC government described the arrangement as temporary and said the US will cover all logistical costs, with zero financial burden on Kinshasa.
• Congo is at least the eighth African country to accept such a deal, joining Ghana, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, South Sudan, Rwanda, and Uganda.
• The agreement runs alongside Washington’s efforts to secure a Congo-Rwanda peace deal and gain access to Congolese critical minerals.
• Rights groups and legal experts have challenged third-country deportations across the continent, raising due process and human rights concerns.

The Democratic Republic of Congo announced on Sunday that it will accept migrants deported from the United States who have no connection to the country, becoming the latest African nation to enter a third-country deportation arrangement under the Trump administration. The Congolese Ministry of Communications confirmed that arrivals are expected to begin in April, without specifying a date or the number of people involved.

Kinshasa described the deal as a temporary measure tied to what it called its “commitment to human dignity and international solidarity.” The arrangement carries no costs for the Congolese government, the US will fund all logistics, the ministry’s statement said. Reuters first reported on April 3 that Congo was in active talks over such an agreement, citing two Congolese government sources and three UN officials briefed on the negotiations.

The announcement lands at a sensitive diplomatic moment. According to both Reuters and Al Jazeera, the Trump administration is simultaneously pushing to finalise a peace deal between Congo and neighbouring Rwanda, while also pursuing a separate agreement to secure US access to Congolese critical minerals. Those parallel tracks place the deportation deal inside a wider web of bilateral interests, though neither the US nor the DRC has publicly linked any of them. Congo’s government said no automatic transfers are planned and that each case will be reviewed individually under Congolese law and national security criteria.

The US has now reached third-country deportation agreements with at least seven other African nations. According to AP News, those countries include Ghana, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, South Sudan, and Rwanda, many of them already facing restrictions on trade, aid, and migration under the current US administration. A report released by the Democratic staff of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee found the Trump administration has spent at least $40 million deporting roughly 300 migrants to countries other than their own since the programme began.

The practice has drawn sustained legal and human rights scrutiny. The US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants told Al Jazeera that third-country deportations have been systematically carried out since February 2025, and that individuals transferred under these arrangements typically have no say over where they are sent, a process the committee says raises serious due process concerns, particularly when the receiving country cannot be considered safe for the individual. In Uganda, where a similar deal was announced last week, the Uganda Law Society went to court to challenge the deportation of a dozen arrivals. The society’s vice president, Asiimwe Anthony, described the transfers as part of what he called the “ill winds of transnational repression.” Several of the African nations involved in these agreements have governments with documented poor human rights records, including Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, and South Sudan.