Burundi agrees to take US deportees with no ties to the country

Burundi has agreed to accept people deported by the United States who have no previous connection to the country, a spokesperson for the country’s president announced on Tuesday.

Presidential spokesperson Nancy Ninette Mutoni said Burundi would take in only people who were not facing prosecution and had no links to terrorism. She was speaking at an event attended by government officials in Ngozi, the Associated Press reported (https://apnews.com/article/us-deportations-burundi-trump-immigration-b67169a3303dd447096bee06c87fe89d).

Mutoni did not say when the deportees would arrive or how many Burundi had agreed to receive. She said preparations were under way to provide accommodation and help the deportees live in local communities.

“Receiving them requires serious planning — where they will stay, what they will eat and how they will live alongside the local population,” Mutoni said.

The move extends the Trump administration’s third-country deportation programme, under which the US has sent deportees to several African countries, including Eswatini and South Sudan. A US appeals court ruling last week threw the programme into question: lawyers for immigrants said a flight carrying about 70 people had been scheduled to travel from Louisiana to Burundi, Rwanda and the Central African Republic but was cancelled.

At least 35 countries have signed agreements with the US to take in third-country nationals, according to a tally by Refugees International and Human Rights First. UN human rights experts warned on Monday that such removals put deportees at heightened risk of abuse, Al Jazeera reported (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/29/us-supreme-court-allows-trump-to-continue-third-country-deportations).