An Iraqi man suspected of working for Islamic State has been deported from the US to Rwanda.
Omar Abdulsattar Ameen was granted refugee status in the US in 2014. The Iraqi government maintained that he was a member of Islamic State and responsible for the murder of a police officer. In 2021, a judge found that Ameen’s account in response to the case against him was “not plausible.”
During his first term, Trump tried to deport Ameen, and so did Joe Biden, but neither administration was successful. They accused Ameen of lying on his refugee application by saying he had not interacted with any terrorist groups.
According to an unnamed official who spoke to Reuters and an internal government email, Ameen was sent to Rwanda at the beginning of this month.
It has been reported that Rwanda has agreed to host third-country deportees from the US as part of a “new removal program.” No details of a deal between the US and the central African country have been made public.
Rwanda has made itself a destination for Western countries looking to deport foreign nationals who can’t be removed to their home countries. In 2022, it signed an agreement to take thousands of asylum seekers from the UK, but that deal was scuppered by new Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer.