Burundi agrees to receive some US deportees as third-country removal case reaches Supreme Court

Burundi said on September 29 in Ngozi that it had agreed to receive people deported from the United States who have no previous connection to the country. Presidential spokesperson Nancy Ninette Mutoni described limits on who Burundi would accept, but gave no number or arrival date. The announcement adds Burundi to a group of countries involved in the US third-country deportation policy as the Supreme Court considers a challenge to that policy.

Who Burundi says it will accept

Mutoni said Burundi would accept people who were not facing prosecution and had no links to terrorism. She spoke at an event attended by government officials in Ngozi, according to the Associated Press. Her statement set out those broad conditions, but the available reporting does not establish how officials will assess eligibility or identify the people who may be transferred.

Burundi is preparing accommodation and arrangements for deportees to live in local communities, Mutoni said. ‘Receiving them requires serious planning – where they will stay, what they will eat and how they will live alongside the local population,’ she said, according to Reuters. Those preparations describe the government’s stated intentions; they do not establish that anyone has arrived under the agreement.

Mutoni said Burundi wanted to strengthen diplomatic relations and offer hospitality to people in need. On possible citizenship, she said that if deportees chose to join Burundian citizens and contribute to national development, the law would be respected. She did not announce a special path to citizenship or say that those received would be required to apply for it.

What remains undisclosed about the agreement

That leaves the practical scope of the agreement open: the available accounts do not say how many transfers are planned, what arrangements would apply after arrival or whether either government would make a payment. No retained account establishes that a person has yet been sent to Burundi under this agreement. Those gaps matter for assessing what the announcement will mean for deportees and for communities expected to receive them.

How the Supreme Court case affects third-country removals

On September 29, the US Supreme Court granted the federal government’s application to stay a February 25 district-court order and judgment in a case challenging its third-country removal guidance. The court also agreed to hear the case. The stay is temporary: the docket says it will end when the Supreme Court sends down its judgment. The order does not resolve whether the guidance is lawful.

The justices directed the parties to address whether the district court had jurisdiction, whether it could grant classwide relief, and whether the government’s guidance violates immigration law, due process or protections relating to torture claims. The court called for a briefing schedule that would allow arguments in its December 2026 session. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the stay application, according to the docket.

The court case concerns the wider US policy rather than the terms of Burundi’s newly announced agreement. It places an immediate legal question alongside the operational questions Burundi has yet to answer. The Supreme Court has scheduled a review of the policy’s legality; the announcement itself does not say when any transfer to Burundi could take place.

Burundi joins a wider set of receiving countries

Reuters reported that Washington had sent third-country deportees to several African nations and other countries, sometimes places where the deportees had no ties. Rights groups have argued that such arrangements can undermine protections against return to a person’s home country when a US immigration court has found that return unsafe. Those concerns concern the wider policy; the published accounts do not establish conditions for anyone sent to Burundi.

Other agreements provide context for the scale of the policy, but their terms cannot be applied to Burundi. In a February report on a Democratic Senate committee staff review, AP said the administration had spent at least $40 million deporting roughly 300 people to third countries. Those were the staff report’s findings at that time, not a disclosed cost for the Burundi arrangement. For now, Burundi’s eligibility statement and preparations are the clearest public description of its plan.