Uzbekistan

On April 30, 2025, 131 individuals from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were transferred to Uzbekistan. Earlier that month, the United States and Uzbekistan formally announced a partnership facilitating deportations of individuals from the three countries. 

Uzbek officials said that the country “did not want to become a regional hub” for non-Uzbek deported individuals;according to Uzbek media reports, the Kazakh and Kyrgyz nationals who arrived on the U.S.- and Uzbek-organized flight would continue onward to their respective home countries. The operation was financed in part by Uzbekistan itself, which provided the plane and fully funded the deportation of its own nationals. An additional flight carrying third country nationals to Uzbekistan may have occurred in September (since a plane tracked by ICE Flight Monitor had all of the same characteristics of the initial flight), though it has not yet been confirmed.

Specific details about the transferred individuals remain unknown, including whether any of the Kazakh or Kyrgyz nationals transferred by the United States and then repatriated by Uzbekistan had previously been granted withholding of removal or protection under the Convention Against Torture by U.S. immigration judges.

The transfers raise serious concerns for human rights and international law. Individuals returned to Uzbekistan face well-documented risks of torture, arbitrary detention, political persecution, and invasive surveillance. Non-Uzbek individuals are reportedly detained for immigration purposes in criminal prisons. As UNHCR has noted, there is no information on the actual conditions for granting “political asylum,” and Afghans who have attempted to apply have not been registered or accepted. Moreover, current legislation denies any recourse to judicial review of asylum decisions, and does not protect asylum seekers from administrative expulsion. Instead, in the absence of a national asylum system, the entry and stay of refugees and asylum seekers remains regulated by immigration laws, which, as the UN Human Rights Committee noted in 2020, leaves them “without adequate safeguards against arbitrary detention, deportation and refoulement.” Foreign citizens and stateless persons may also be targeted under laws criminalizing “undesirable” persons, particularly if they have engaged in dissent or activism. The fact that Uzbekistan has not acceded to the UN Refugee Convention further heightens the danger. 

For Uzbekistan, this collaboration carries diplomatic significance: it bolsters the country’s international standing and supports its broader foreign policy goals of deepening ties with Western nations while simultaneously balancing its strategic relationships with Russia and China. It also has economic significance in terms of growing U.S. company investment in Uzbekistan and advancing Uzbekistan’s effort to join the World Trade Organization. Third country transfers of Uzbek citizens likely remains a concern for Uzbekistan. In February, seven Uzbek nationals were nearly deported to Costa Rica, though were sent back to Uzbekistan due to negotiations with the United States government.