United States and Uganda signed asylum transfer deal, later used to fast-track dismissals

The United States and Uganda signed an Asylum Cooperative Agreement at Kampala on July 29, 2025, which entered into force the same day and was published in the Federal Register that September 3. Under it, Uganda agreed to accept an unspecified number of third-country nationals with pending U.S. asylum claims who cannot safely return home, while retaining case-by-case discretion and excluding people with criminal records or unaccompanied minors; a senior Ugandan official told Reuters the arrangement functioned as "a transition phase for potential onward transmission to other countries" — a framing at odds with the agreement's stated purpose of Uganda processing protection claims itself.

ICE trial attorneys began filing motions in immigration court to pretermit — summarily dismiss without a hearing — asylum applications on the basis that respondents could be removed to Uganda under the agreement, including in the high-profile case of Chinese asylum seeker Heng Guan. According to documents obtained by the New York Times, DHS internally directed attorneys on December 19, 2025 to stop filing such motions against nationals of most African countries and to withdraw ones already filed, without explaining the reversal publicly. As word spread in late March 2026 that a dozen deportees would soon arrive, the Uganda Law Society went to court to challenge the deportation; its vice president, Asiimwe Anthony, said the group viewed the transfers "as but one gust from the ill winds of transnational repression that are blowing across our world." Eight asylum seekers — from Mauritania, Angola, Ethiopia, Mali, Togo, and Guinea — were forcibly transferred to Uganda on April 2, 2026; as of July 2026, two had been granted refugee status there, four had returned to their home countries, one had fled, and one remained awaiting repatriation.