Africa: Transactionalism Tested – allAfrica.com

The United States’ hastily established third country deportation deals are chaotic and counterproductive.

The second Trump administration’s foreign policy towards African countries has been characterized by transactionalism. The U.S. has trumpeted minerals-for-security deals in the Eastern DRC and positioned the end of foreign aid as a recentering of trade. Transactionalism is supposed to do away with messy norms and ideology, and instead produce durable and clear agreements, predicated on mutual self-interest. In practice, the deal regime has been inconsistent, arbitrary, and opaque. The recent spate of third country deportation deals reveals an essential truth about this administration’s supposed foreign policy doctrine: transactionalism only works when the interlocutors actually agree on the details of the transaction.

There is little confirmed information on the incentives the U.S. is offering receiving countries. According to documents reviewed by Human Rights Watch, Eswatini received $5.1 million in exchange for taking up to 160 deportees. Some speculate that Eswatini and Uganda were motivated by reductions in tariff rates. Uganda may have also had political aims; with a chilling of relations under the Biden administration and an election looming, accepting deportees may be a way to shore up diplomatic ties with Washington. Ghana seems to have won the reversal of visa restrictions for signing onto the deal. In the inverse of that situation and a signal to states that may refuse to sign on, Zimbabwe saw travel visas suspended following Harare’s refusal to accept U.S. asylum-seekers.

In addition to the mystery around the quid pro quo of the deals, confusion reigns around the details of who is being sent where and why. The U.S. has insisted it is opting to deport people to third countries because every effort to return people to their countries of origin failed. A White House press release quotes administration officials as saying, “no country on earth wanted to accept them,” and “their home countries would not take them back.” There is little evidence to believe Washington’s narrative. In one case, Mexico said it was not notified that a Mexican national was being sent to South Sudan. Then, South Sudan repatriated that man to Mexico a few weeks after he had arrived. The same goes for Eswatini, where a man was repatriated to Jamaica after spending two months in a maximum-security prison. Abuja said it was not made aware that Nigerians were being sent to Ghana. Five people threatened with deportation to Libya were repatriated instead to Vietnam, Laos, and Mexico, just weeks after a judge blocked the government from sending them to Libya.

There are disagreements and contradictions between and within the U.S. and receiving countries over the categories of people being deported. In verbal statements, Uganda said it would not accept criminals or unaccompanied minors, but the written agreement only mentions minors. Maybe this is a misunderstanding between the countries. Maybe this is an attempt at obfuscation, as it would be politically difficult for Kampala to accept people Washington described as “barbaric” “sickos” and “monsters” who “prey on the community.” Regardless, there is a misalignment here between the two countries.

Moreover, the United States and recipient countries are inconsistent on the most basic facts about the deportees. The U.S. identified one of the men sent to South Sudan as a citizen of that country, but reporting indicates he left as a baby, before it was an independent state, raising the question of where he actually has citizenship. Ghana claimed that the people it received were all either Nigerian or Gambian, but court documents indicate there were Liberian, Malian, and Togolese nationals in the group as well. Ghana also said it repatriated all fourteen deportees it received, until lawyers for some of the deportees pointed out that four people remained in the country. When a second group of people arrived in Eswatini, the government first announced that eleven people were on the way, then, a day later, the government confirmed the arrival of ten people, with no reference made to the now unaccounted for person. These basic errors make it more difficult for families to track their loved ones, complicate lawyers’ access to their clients, sow public mistrust, and are a further sign of how sloppy these agreements are.

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