Trump, send your deportees to Europe not Africa

On August 5, Rwanda announced it had agreed to judge 250 migrants nether the Trump administration’s expanding third-country deportation programme.

Speaking from Kigali, authorities spokesperson Yolande Makolo said Rwanda would clasp the close to determine which deportees to admit for “resettlement”. Those accepted, she added, would person training, healthcare, and lodging to assistance them “rebuild their lives”.

The programme forms portion of President Donald Trump’s arguable pledge to transportation retired “the largest deportation cognition successful American history.”
It besides marks the 3rd deportation statement of its benignant connected the African continent.

On July 16, the US sent 5 convicted criminals from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba, and Yemen to Eswatini, formerly known arsenic Swaziland.

Described arsenic “barbaric and violent” and rejected by their countries of origin, they are confined to isolated units astatine the Matsapha Correctional Complex, adjacent the superior Mbabane, pending eventual repatriation.

Eleven days earlier, connected July 5, 8 men convicted of murder, intersexual assault, and robbery were deported to South Sudan. Reports disagree connected whether immoderate deportee was South Sudanese.

The deportations person already provoked wide outrage – from civilian nine groups successful Eswatini, to lawyers successful South Sudan, who denounce them arsenic illegal.

South Africa’s authorities has adjacent lodged a ceremonial protestation with Eswatini.

Nigeria, meanwhile, has rebuffed US unit to judge 300 Venezuelans, with Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar saying the state already has “enough problems” and “over 230 cardinal people” to attraction for.

These deals are unfair.

The US is strong-arming others astatine the disbursal of susceptible people.

Trump’s established brutality is horrifying. His household separations successful 2019 near children terrified and alone, each successful the sanction of policy.

The US is present sending radical to Rwanda, Eswatini, and South Sudan – countries already struggling to attraction for their ain citizens.

This information exposes Trump’s Victorian presumption of Africa: a desolate, irredeemable continent unworthy of respect oregon adjacent partnership. His imaginativeness echoes a Western tradition, crystallised successful Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, wherever Africa is portrayed arsenic “dark” and “primeval” – a onshore deemed oppressive and violent, its radical formed arsenic incapable of understanding, feeling, oregon compassion.

That is not who we are.

Yes, Africa has challenges.

Nonetheless, we bash not crook the marginalised into pawns, nor bash we disguise exile arsenic policy. Our humanity is unshakable and beyond reproach.

Today, Uganda hosts astir 1.7 cardinal refugees, making it Africa’s largest refugee-hosting country. This fig exceeds the combined exile populations nether UNHCR’s mandate successful the UK, France, and Belgium today.

Europe indispensable presume a acold greater stock of work for asylum seekers and refugees.

These third-country deportation deals are not credible policy.

They are colonialism reborn.

No self-respecting African person should ever hold to enactment successful an organised atrocity – not erstwhile Africa inactive bleeds from the wounds inflicted by the West: Sudan’s civilian war, civic unrest successful the eastbound Democratic Republic of Congo, biology devastation successful Nigeria’s Delta, and the continuing scope of French monetary imperialism done the CFA.

“Uncle Sam” present plans to nonstop some convicted criminals and hopeless asylum seekers to Africa’s shores, alternatively of the warships of old. Both groups merit enactment astatine location successful the US, with extended rehabilitation for offenders and harmless sanctuary for the vulnerable.

If not, Europe tin beryllium the lone alternative.

Let the architects of empire look the heat.

Let the wealthy, politically obnoxious allies of Washington transportation the load for once.

Rwanda, Eswatini, and South Sudan are among the poorest nations successful the world, with per capita incomes conscionable a tiny fraction of their erstwhile assemblage rulers successful Europe. Expecting them to transportation the load of America’s deportees is not lone unjust – it is absurd.

A May 2025 study, Unequal Exchange and North-South Relations, undertaken by Gaston Nievas and Thomas Piketty, analysed overseas wealthiness accumulation implicit much than 2 centuries. It shows that by 1914, European powers held nett overseas assets approaching 140 percent of GDP, underscoring however assemblage transfers, artificially debased commodity prices, forced labour, and exploitation fuelled Europe’s enrichment.

From Juba to Kigali, assemblage plunder inactive drives planetary inequality.

A instrumentality to the systemic brutalities unleashed aft the disastrous Berlin Conference of 1885, erstwhile European powers carved up Africa, cannot beryllium accepted.

No substance what officials successful Rwanda, South Sudan, oregon Eswatini assertion successful public, sending America’s cast-offs to Africa is assemblage exploitation repackaged for today.

This is not a caller strategy.

Beginning successful the 19th century, galore European colonies were reduced to offshore extraction centres and dumping grounds. France banished convicts and governmental exiles to territories specified arsenic present-day Gabon and Djibouti. Spain utilized Bioko Island successful Equatorial Guinea arsenic a penal colony for deportees from Cuba.

The US has revived that aforesaid imperial entitlement, delivering a caller stroke to some Africa and the Americas. Most irregular migrants successful the US travel from Venezuela, Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Haiti – nations scarred by centuries of European colonialism and US imperial interference.

These countries embody the ongoing interaction of assemblage legacies and geopolitical meddling that propel migration.

Yet the West, and Europe supra all, denies and disowns the consequences of its crimes, past and present.

European nations person surely prospered done centuries of assemblage exploitation. The UK, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, for instance, boast robust payment systems, nationalist wellness networks, and situation rehabilitation programmes – magnificent structures built connected centuries of assemblage extraction.

They person some the means and the institutions to sorb deportees.

They besides person the record.

These aforesaid powers person eagerly joined the US successful targeting and destabilising sovereign nations crossed Africa, arsenic good arsenic Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya – successful wars wide condemned arsenic violations of planetary law.

Every involution has unleashed caller waves of refugees and asylum seekers, hapless men, women, and children fleeing the precise chaos Western armies engineered: powerless radical whom the West openly ignores oregon despises.

Africa, by contrast, plays by the rules and adheres to the UN Charter. We honour sovereignty, respect planetary law, and strive for peace, adjacent portion shackled by assemblage indebtedness designed to support america dependent.

Europe breaks the rules, Africa abides by them – yet Africa is asked to enarthrosis the burden.

The hypocrisy is staggering.

We volition not bankroll, legitimise, oregon inherit the crimes of empire.

After all, we hardly power our ain destinies. The IMF and World Bank dictate our economies. The UN Security Council enforces aged hierarchies. The G7 protects the West’s interests implicit us, Africans near impoverished and starving. Structural oppression allows the West to support interfering successful the lives of radical crossed Africa and the Americas.

But we volition not beryllium complicit.

We volition not beryllium silent.

Western policies and interventions thrust poverty, displacement, and instability successful the Global South.

If the US insists connected offloading its deportees, fto it nonstop them to those who built and inactive nett from this strategy of oppression.

The West indispensable reckon with its spoils.

Leave Africa retired of it.

Send Trump’s deportees to Europe.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.