Kigali, Rwanda – Rwanda said Tuesday it would accept up to 250 migrants from the United States under a deal agreed with Washington but gave no details on who could be included.

President Donald Trump’s administration has negotiated controversial arrangements to send people to third countries, among them South Sudan and Eswatini, in order to speed up deportations.

The latest deal follows a cancelled agreement with Britain under which Kigali would have received deported illegal migrants from the UK, but that multi-million deal was scrapped after the conservative British government that negotiated it lost last year’s elections.

“Rwanda has agreed with the United States to accept up to 250 migrants,” government spokesperson Yolande Makolo told AFP.

She said Kigali would maintain “the ability to approve each individual proposed for resettlement”.

The US State Department did not confirm the accord but a spokesperson said the United States was working with Rwanda “on a range of mutual priorities”.

The spokesperson added that implementing Trump’s immigration policies was “a top priority”.

– US deportation drive –

Makolo said Kigali had agreed to the new scheme with Washington because “nearly every Rwandan family has experienced the hardships of displacement” and the country supported reintegration and rehabilitation.

Those who arrive in Rwanda will be provided with training, healthcare and accommodation, she added.

No further information was given, including any timeline, with Makolo saying that Rwanda “will provide more details once these have been worked out”.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has taken a number of actions aimed at speeding up deportations of undocumented migrants to countries that are not their own.

His administration deported hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador where they were kept in a harsh high-security jail before being returned to Venezuela.

Some of them described the prison conditions in El Salvador as a violent “hell” in interviews with AFP. The Venezuelan government said only a fraction of them had criminal records.

Trump’s administration has defended so-called third-country deportations as necessary, saying the home nations of some of those targeted for removal sometimes refuse to accept them.

But rights experts have warned that the deportations risk breaking international law by sending people to nations where they face the risk of torture, abduction and other abuses.

South Sudan — which is verging on renewed conflict — accepted eight criminal migrants, with Juba saying in July they remained in government care. Only one was South Sudanese.

Five other migrants labelled criminals by the United States were flown to Eswatini in July and incarcerated.

The government later said they would be repatriated to their own nations.

– Rwanda’s rights record –

Rwanda, home to 13 million people in Africa’s Great Lakes region, claims to be one of the most stable countries on the continent and has drawn praise for its modern infrastructure.

However, the migrant agreement with London drew criticism from rights groups and faced a long-running legal challenge.

President Paul Kagame’s government is often accused of crushing political dissent and press freedom.

Kigali has also come under pressure over its role in the violence roiling the neighbouring eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

DRC saw a fresh surge of clashes this year when the M23 armed group, backed by Rwandan troops, captured two major cities.

In June, the DRC and Rwanda signed a peace agreement in Washington aimed at ending decades of conflict in eastern DRC.

© Agence France-Presse