UGANDA’s lawyers have gone to court to block what they described as the brazen dumping of 16 individuals with criminal backgrounds onto Ugandan soil, hours after the group arrived on a flight from the United States at Entebbe International Airport – a process the legal fraternity condemned as a violation of human dignity orchestrated for the benefit of unnamed, private interests on either side of the Atlantic.
The Uganda Law Society (ULS) and the East Africa Law Society (EALS) jointly confirmed the arrival, issuing a blistering statement that dispensed with diplomatic niceties to describe the deportations as a politically engineered exercise dressed up in the language of law enforcement.
“…effectively dumped in Uganda through an undignified, harrowing and dehumanising process, for the benefit of unnamed, private interests on either side of the Atlantic.”
Uganda Law Society
THE LAW SOCIETIES SPEAK
In a joint statement posted on the Uganda Law Society’s official social media platforms, the two bodies went straight for the jugular. “Uganda Law Society and [the East Africa Law Society] confirm the arrival at Entebbe Airport this morning of a dozen people forcibly removed from the United States (in the name of deportation) and effectively dumped in Uganda through an undignified, harrowing and dehumanising process, for the benefit of unnamed, private interests on either side of the Atlantic,” the statement read.
The societies made clear that the process – carried out under the banner of deportation – was stripped of the procedural and humanitarian safeguards that should govern the removal of any individual from one jurisdiction to another. In their characterisation, what arrived at Entebbe was not a lawful transfer of persons with criminal records to face justice or resettlement in a country of their choosing, but a coerced dumping — the word the societies used with evident deliberateness – of human beings onto Ugandan territory without adequate legal foundation or parliamentary sanction.
“We have gone to Court to challenge this process,” the statement declared, signalling that the legal challenge was already initiated as the individuals were still being processed at Entebbe.
“We are sacrificing human beings for political expediency; in this case, because Uganda wants to be in the good books of the United States.”
Human rights lawyer Nicholas Opio
The blunt tone of the ULS-EALS statement echoed sentiments already circulating in Uganda’s civic space. Prominent human rights lawyer Nicholas Opio had previously likened such deportee arrangements to human trafficking, questioning the fundamental status of those transferred. “Are they refugees or prisoners?” Opio asked, adding: “The proposed deal runs afoul of international law.”
“That I can keep your prisoners if you pay me; how is that different from human trafficking?” Opio said – a formulation that encapsulates the legal and moral unease at the heart of the ULS challenge.
THE DEAL THAT “STINKS”
The arrival of the 16 individuals is the culmination of a deal between President Yoweri Museveni’s government and the Trump administration, brokered without parliamentary approval and with scant public transparency. Uganda’s Foreign Affairs Ministry had in August 2025 confirmed a framework agreement under which Uganda would accept deported individuals who were reluctant to return to their home countries – framed as a third-country deportation arrangement distinct from direct repatriation.
The ministry maintained that Uganda would only accept individuals without criminal records and would prefer those of African nationality. Thursday’s arrival of 16 individuals described by the law societies as having criminal backgrounds appears to directly contradict those stated conditions – a contradiction that lies at the core of the ULS legal challenge.
The agreement was hammered out without reference to Uganda’s Parliament, a procedural failing that drew sharp criticism from opposition figures. “Without parliamentary oversight, the whole scheme stinks,” said Mathias Mpuuga, until recently the leader of Uganda’s parliamentary opposition. Prominent MP Ibrahim Ssemujju was more sardonic, suggesting Museveni had every incentive to accommodate Washington: “He will be asking, ‘When are you bringing them?'”
Analysts argued the deal was less about human rights than political and economic calculus. Marlon Agaba, executive director of the Anti-Corruption Coalition Uganda, described the agreement as serving Museveni’s interests by easing U.S. sanctions pressure on Kampala while potentially opening trade opportunities. “The Trump administration is about deals, about deal-making, and any strongman would welcome that,” Agaba said.
AFRICA: AMERICA’S DEPORTATION DUMPING GROUND?
Uganda’s legal confrontation is the latest chapter in a continent-wide story of African governments entering into third-country deportation arrangements with the Trump administration – agreements that critics say are designed to circumvent U.S. immigration law and international human rights obligations by outsourcing the problem of undepörtable individuals to compliant governments.
Eswatini: The kingdom was one of the first African countries drawn into the arrangement. In July 2025, the United States deported five men – nationals of Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Yemen, and Vietnam – to the southern African kingdom, none of them Swazi citizens. The men were placed in solitary confinement pending eventual transfer to their home countries, a process expected to take up to a year. That the men had no connection to Eswatini and that Eswatini had no legal obligation to receive them underscored the manufactured nature of the arrangement.
South Sudan: Eight individuals were deported by the United States to South Sudan in July 2025 under similar circumstances. A legal challenge in U.S. courts initially halted the process, but a Supreme Court ruling eventually cleared the way for the transfers to proceed — a development that emboldened the Trump administration to push further agreements with other African states.
Ghana: In September 2025, Ghana became the first West African country drawn into the arrangement, accepting 14 nationals from Nigeria, Gambia, Liberia, Togo, and Mali – none of them Ghanaian. The deportees were woken in the middle of the night at a Louisiana staging facility, shackled at the waist, hands, and feet, placed on a U.S. military cargo plane and not informed of their destination until airborne. Court declarations from the deportees describe some being held in straitjackets for hours. On arrival in Ghana, they were detained in what lawyers described as “squalid conditions” in an open-air military facility. Several were subsequently expelled to Togo in apparent violation of diplomatic assurances Ghana had provided to the United States. A Ghanaian civil society group, Democracy Hub, filed a constitutional challenge before Ghana’s Supreme Court, arguing the arrangement violated the country’s constitution through its lack of parliamentary ratification — a challenge that closely mirrors what Uganda’s lawyers are now pursuing.
Rwanda: Kigali confirmed it would receive up to 250 deportees from the United States under an arrangement whose terms remain largely opaque. The Rwanda deal formed part of a pattern in which the Trump administration preferentially approached African governments with poor human rights records or those under American sanctions pressure — a pattern that rights groups argued was not coincidental.
“It seems evident that the United States has concocted a scheme to use third countries to circumvent what the United States cannot do directly.”
ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt
The pattern was captured precisely by ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt, who told a U.S. federal court that the deportations amounted to a structured scheme. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan was more measured but equally pointed, suggesting that Washington appeared to be conducting an “end-run” around legal protections – doing indirectly what it could not legally do directly.
Studies cited in the ongoing U.S. litigation have shown that Black immigrants are deported on criminal grounds at a rate roughly four times higher than their overall share of the undocumented population would predict, raising acute concerns about racial profiling embedded in what the administration presents as neutral law enforcement.
THE LEGAL ARCHITECTURE OF THE CHALLENGE
The ULS court challenge targets both the procedural and substantive dimensions of Thursday’s deportations. On procedure, the societies argue that the agreement that enabled the transfers was concluded without parliamentary oversight, rendering it constitutionally defective under Ugandan law. On substance, they challenge the characterisation of the individuals as “deportees” entitled to be deposited on Ugandan soil when they have no legal connection to Uganda and Uganda has no treaty obligation to receive them.
Underlying both arguments is a deeper challenge to the bilateral logic of the Trump administration’s third-country deportation programme: that a government can launder its legal obligations through a diplomatic agreement with a third country and thereby extinguish those obligations entirely. The ULS position, consistent with the emerging legal consensus across multiple jurisdictions, is that no such laundering is permissible under international law.
Uganda already hosts between 1.7 and 1.8 million refugees – one of the largest refugee populations in Africa – drawn primarily from the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Sudan. The arrival of individuals with criminal records who have no connection to Uganda imposes additional strain on a country already stretched by genuine humanitarian obligations.
THE STAKES
What is playing out in Kampala is a contest over the terms on which African governments will engage the Trump administration’s sweeping deportation programme – a programme that has expelled nearly 200,000 people since Trump returned to office in January 2025. Thursday’s legal challenge by the Uganda Law Society and East Africa Law Society signals that the continent’s legal institutions will not cede the field to executive convenience on either side of the Atlantic.
The ULS statement closed with a hashtag that struck a defiant note – #BangTheTable – a phrase that in the Southern African political idiom carries a precise meaning: enough accommodation, time to push back. In Kampala, the lawyers have taken the phrase from the streets to the courtroom.
