questioning the lack of approval from the East African country’s parliament and suggesting the deal is a means to ease political pressure on President Yoweri Museveni. After facing sanctions from Washington that have targeted many government officials, including the parliamentary speaker, “Museveni will be happy” to transact with the US, said Ibrahim Ssemujju, a lawmaker who is a prominent opposition figure. “He will be asking, ‘When are you bringing them?'”

Ugandan officials have released few details about the agreement although they have stated that they prefer to take deportees of African origin and do not want people with criminal records. However, the country is being pushed as a deportation location for high-profile detainee Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man and an El Salvador native charged with human smuggling. Abrego Garcia has become the face of Trump’s hardline anti-immigration policies. He has an American wife and children, has lived in the US state of Maryland for years and has been under protected legal status since 2019 when a judge ruled he could not be deported to El Salvador because he could be harmed in his home country.

He was detained on Monday by immigration officials in Baltimore. The US Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Abrego Garcia “is being processed for removal to Uganda”. He already has been deported as one of more than 200 people the Trump administration sent this year to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison as part of Trump’s crackdown on refugees, immigrants and asylum seekers in the US. His case remains a major flashpoint for the Trump administration in its anti-immigration crackdown. Department of Justice lawyers admitted that the Salvadoran citizen had been wrongly deported due to an “administrative error”. Abrego Garcia was severely beaten and subjected to psychological torture in the El Salvador prison, his lawyers say. Without parliamentary oversight, “the whole scheme stinks,” said Mathias Mpuuga, until recently the leader of the opposition in Uganda’s Parliament. He said that the agreement with the US left him “a little perplexed” because Uganda is struggling to look after refugees fleeing conflicts in neighbouring countries, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and Sudan. (Al Jazeera/AP)