Uganda

On April 2, 2026, the United States sent eight non-Ugandan asylum seekers to Uganda under an Asylum Cooperative Agreement (ACA). This included seven men and one woman from Mauritania, Angola, Ethiopia, Mali, Togo and Guinea. 

On July 29, 2025, the United States signed an ACA with Uganda, under which the United States would send those who “may seek protection” in the United States to Uganda. Ugandan officials acknowledged the arrangement, stating that “individuals with criminal records and unaccompanied minors will not be accepted” and that “Uganda also prefers that individuals from African countries shall be the ones transferred to Uganda.” The agreement was published in the U.S. Federal Register on September 3, 2025 without any details about its implementation. 

Very limited information is publicly available about the specific arrangements the Ugandan government has made to receive, orient, and process persons transferred from the United States under the ACA. A senior Ugandan government official was quoted in Reuters suggesting that the deported individuals would remain ​in Uganda as part of "a transition phase for potential onward transmission to other countries," a framing that is inconsistent with the purpose of an Asylum Cooperative Agreement.

An ACA is an agreement where the United States bars asylum seekers from applying for U.S. asylum and sends them to a third country to apply for protection there. U.S. law governing “safe third country” agreements provides that asylum seekers cannot be sent to third countries for assessment of their asylum claims unless they would be safe from persecution and have access to full and fair asylum procedures. The current and former Trump administrations have repeatedly entered into ACAs with countries that do not meet these requirements. The agreement with Uganda is being challenged in U.T. v. Bondi, which challenges the legality of several aspects of the ACAs purportedly entered into under the safe third country provision of U.S. law. This includes a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 2019 interim final rule purporting to authorize the ACAs (ratified by DHS in 2025), DHS guidance implementing them, and designations finding that countries with which the United States has ACAs provide access to a “full and fair” asylum system. U.T. v. Bondi began as a challenge to ACAs during the first Trump administration as U.T. v. Barr.

Based on the ACA with Uganda, attorneys for DHS have been filing motions in immigration court to have immigration judges summarily cancel (“pretermit”) people’s pending asylum cases without giving them an opportunity to have their cases considered in the United States. According to data analysis by Mobile Pathways using publicly available government data, between December 2025 and February 2026, over 1,100 non-Ugandan asylum seekers had their cases pretermitted and were designated for removal first to Uganda under the ACA. Many of them were from Africa (Guinea, Sudan, Mali, Togo, Angola, Burkina Faso,Chad, DRC, Senegal, Ethiopia, Egypt, DRC, Cameroon, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, Gambia, Ghana, Somalia, Sierra Leone) but a significant number were from Asia (Russia, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Georgia, Nepal, India, China, Armenia) and a few were from countries in the Americas (Peru, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador). In mid December, DHS filed some motions to withdraw pre-termissions for the Uganda ACA for people from countries outside Africa, likely because the United States and Uganda were still working out an implementation plan and the nationalities that can be subject to the agreement. The Ugandan government may have signed the agreement but delayed implementation to avoid both U.S. and domestic criticism in the lead up and during the contested 2026 election.

Uganda’s history of receiving transferred asylum seekers raises serious concerns about their treatment, access to legal status, and protection. Between 2015 and 2018, Uganda received 1,749 Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers transferred from Israel. Once in Uganda, many of these individuals were reportedly subjected to beatings, exploitation, and forced return to potentially dangerous situations in their home countries. Following litigation, the Israeli Supreme court halted the Israeli government from carrying out further forced transfers to Uganda and Rwanda in 2018. 

Uganda is unsafe for many asylum seekers, including LGBTQ+ people, women, and political activists. Members of the LGBTQ+ population face legal discrimination and violent attacks in Uganda. Journalists and individuals critical of the Ugandan government risk arrest and brutal detention. Violence against women is widespread, and survivors frequently encounter inadequate support services.

Uganda’s asylum system is backlogged, and those recognized as refugees are often sent to settlements with limited access to education or legal employment. Poverty rates in the districts hosting the largest refugee settlements are among the highest in the country. The government's own resources for refugee programming are minimal; Uganda's refugee response—food assistance through the World Food Program (WFP), primary and secondary education, water, sanitation, and health services—has been financed overwhelmingly by international donors, primarily the United States, and deteriorated dramatically in 2025 and 2026 as a result of the United States Government's suspension of foreign assistance and the freeze of USAID programming globally. Backlogs in asylum adjudication have been exacerbated by recent cuts in funding to UNHCR, which helps Ugandan authorities conduct refugee status determinations as well as the fact that in 2026, Uganda eliminated a system of prima facie refugee status recognition. Under this system, nationals of countries experiencing mass displacement, including South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Burundi, and Somalia, had been granted refugee status on a group basis without individualized adjudication. Legal assistance is extremely limited for asylum seekers in Uganda, leaving those with complex claims particularly disadvantaged. People from countries including those no longer covered by prima facie status who cannot navigate the individual system are at risk of being left without any recognized status, exposing them to arrest, detention, and deportation.

For years, asylum seekers in Uganda have been effectively forced to return to their countries of origin or to move to other countries due to the inability to survive in Uganda. In 2022 alone, 75,500 South Sudanese refugees returned from Uganda despite UNHCR deeming these returns unsafe. During a period spanning from late 2025 to early 2026, Uganda’s government no longer received and adjudicated asylum applications from Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalis, citing a shortfall of funding from UNHCR and an overburdened system that cannot provide full and fair asylum procedures and essential services to recognized refugees. During this period, individuals from the affected nationalities who attempted to access Uganda's asylum system were detained by Ugandan authorities rather than referred to the asylum procedure. Some individuals from these nationalities were reportedly deported or subjected to non-voluntary returns to their countries of origin or to third countries during this period, raising serious concerns about refoulement.

The U.S.-Uganda relationship is shaped by a range of economic, political, and diplomatic considerations that may have influenced Uganda’s decision to sign and implement the ACA agreement with the United States. Uganda has sought to lower U.S. tariffs on its exports and to regain eligibility under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Uganda also seemed interested in increasing U.S. humanitarian, health, and development assistance, removing the U.S. pause on immigrant visa adjudication and restrictions and fees on non-immigrant visas, including the 90-day limit, and in lifting of visa sanctions imposed on certain Ugandan officials.