Washington — Rwanda’s government and the Trump administration are discussing details about a potential agreement for Kigali to accept deportees from the U.S., including Africans and other non-Rwandan nationals, CBS News has learned.
Decisions on potential financial compensation for taking in the deportees and other details would be discussed within the next two weeks, according to a Rwandan official. A U.S. official and a Rwandan official both confirmed the active talks about sending third-country deportees from U.S. soil to the east African nation.
During a televised Cabinet meeting event earlier this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was actively searching for other countries to take in migrants expelled from the U.S.
“We are working with other countries to say, ‘We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings,'” he said while sitting alongside President Trump. Rubio added that the “further away from America, the better.”
The Rwanda arrangements were first reported by the Washington Post, which also cited work by an independent journalist who had uncovered the recent deportation from the U.S. of an Iraqi national to Rwanda.
A Rwandan official told CBS News that the Trump administration had indeed carried out that deportation, but did not share additional information about the man. The Rwandan official also told CBS News that Kigali had unique past experience with handling deportees, and cited a past deal with the United Kingdom. The U.K.’s deportation of asylum seekers in 2024 sparked legal and political controversy for the then conservative U.K. government. Immediately after taking office last year, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the policy was “dead and buried.”
The Trump administration has looked to third countries to handle America’s influx of migrants and attempts to deport them. El Salvador has an arrangement with the Trump administration to accept deportees and to imprison some of them for a fee, including at the notorious CECOT prison, a move which has led to a flurry of legal action. Other countries, including Mexico and Panama, have agreed to accept deportees who are not their own nationals.
The deportation talks with the State Department come at the same time that the U.S. is trying to broker a peace agreement between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In front of the cameras, Rubio also praised Mr. Trump’s envoy to Africa, Massad Boulos, who is Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law, and said he’d recently sent him to the region. Boulos, who has the title of senior advisor for Africa, has publicly spoken of his efforts to broker billion-dollar minerals deals in the region.
Rubio also said he recently oversaw the signing of a declaration of peace between the DRC and Rwanda, and stated that he hopes to broker a lasting permanent peace.
