A "Safe Third Country" That Jails Gay People: The US Deportation Deal With Uganda

In 2025, the United States and Uganda signed an Asylum Cooperative Agreement. Under it, the US can send people who are neither American nor Ugandan to Uganda, where they are meant to have their claims for protection considered. The first group arrived at Entebbe on 1 April 2026.

The country agreeing to protect them has a law that punishes same-sex intimacy with life imprisonment, and so-called “aggravated homosexuality” with death.

What the deal says

The agreement took effect on 29 July 2025 and was published by the US government that September. Uganda agrees to consider accepting deportees from the US. The US will not send unaccompanied children, and Uganda will not return anyone to their home country until their protection claim has been decided. Ugandan officials have said the deal covers only people from other African countries and excludes anyone with a criminal record.

Vincent Bagiire Waiswa, the Permanent Secretary at Uganda’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said: “The Agreement conforms to Uganda’s national laws and international obligations.” President Museveni praised President Trump’s deportation programme at a rally in January.

What happened to the first group

Uganda’s government says eight people arrived on 1 April. The Uganda Law Society put the number at a dozen. New Lines Magazine reported that they arrived in dirty clothes, with no money and no way of contacting their families, and that most spoke French rather than English. “They had not been told what they were being taken for and had no idea where they were,” said Robert Okot, a lawyer who met them. By September, five had gone back to their home countries and two had been granted asylum in Uganda.

The Uganda Law Society and the East Africa Law Society went to court in April to have the agreement declared unlawful, calling the deportations “an undignified, harrowing and dehumanising process”. The Law Society’s president, Isaac Ssemakadde, who is now in exile, has said he does not expect the courts to hear the case.

Where LGBTQ+ people come in

In June 2026, the US group Immigration Equality published a report on LGBTQ+ people caught up in third-country deportations. One of them, a gay man it calls Hassan, was ordered deported to Uganda. According to CNN’s reporting, his asylum case was never heard before he was sent there.

He is not the only one. In October, Reuters documented 40 cases of LGBTQ+ migrants who had legal protection in the US and were deported to third countries, mostly in Africa, including Cameroon, Sierra Leone and Eswatini, all of which criminalise same-sex relations. At least 16 were then sent back to the countries they had fled, and nine are in hiding. A former senior US immigration official, Claire Trickler-McNulty, said sending people “to a third country where they face the very persecution we recognised makes a mockery of our protection systems”.

The Department of Homeland Security told Reuters that immigration enforcement “does not enforce the law on the basis of sexual orientation; that would be illegal”.

Why Uganda is not safe for LGBTQ+ people

Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 applies to everyone in the country, refugees and deportees included. Since it came into force, the Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum has recorded 969 cases targeting LGBTIQ people, and Human Rights Watch has documented police entrapment through dating apps, extortion and forced anal examinations. We have written about how those traps work.

US law says a country used in this way must be one where a person’s life or freedom would not be threatened on grounds that include membership of a particular social group, and US asylum law has long recognised sexual orientation as one of those grounds. Sending a gay man to Uganda for protection is hard to square with that.

To be clear about what is known: we are not aware of any reported case so far of a deportee being arrested in Uganda under the Act. But the risk is built into the arrangement. Anyone sent to Uganda is subject to its laws, and a person whose claim for protection rests on their sexuality is being sent to a country where that sexuality is a crime.

What happens next

The US Supreme Court is due to hear arguments in December on a lower-court ruling that had restricted third-country deportations. Whatever it decides, there are things that should happen now:

• The US should stop sending LGBTQ+ people to countries that criminalise them, and screen properly before any transfer. In all 40 cases Reuters documented, US courts had already granted the person some form of protection.
• Uganda should not accept people it cannot protect. A government that criminalises LGBTQ+ people cannot credibly offer them asylum.
• Ugandan courts should hear the Law Society’s challenge, in public, on its merits.

If you, or someone you know, has been sent to Uganda under this deal and is at risk, the Refugee Law Project in Kampala provides legal aid and counselling to asylum seekers. You can also contact us. We are a small organisation and cannot offer money, legal representation or relocation, but we can listen, share safety advice, and help you reach organisations that can do more.

A country cannot be a safe place to send people while, for some of them, simply existing there is a crime.