Mevlut Ozkan
30 July 2025•Update: 30 July 2025
ISTANBUL
South Sudan has told the Trump administration it is open to accepting more deportees from the US, according to a report published Wednesday by Politico.
The statement followed the recent deportation of eight migrants from the US to South Sudan. Only one of them was reportedly a South Sudanese national. The group had been held at a US military base in Djibouti before being flown to the East African country.
In exchange, Juba is asking Washington to lift sanctions on a senior official, reinstate revoked US visas, unfreeze access to a US-based bank account, and support legal proceedings against First Vice President Riek Machar, who remains under house arrest. The Trump administration has so far declined these requests, according to the report.
In April, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio imposed a visa ban on South Sudanese passport holders and halted new arrivals. He accused the country of obstructing deportation efforts after it initially rejected one individual Juba claimed was Congolese but later accepted.
South Sudan, which gained independence from Sudan in 2011, has been engulfed in conflict since December 2013, when President Salva Kiir Mayardit dismissed then-Vice President Machar and accused him of attempting a coup.
Despite peace agreements signed in 2018 and 2022, the country remains unstable.
In February, a militia known as the White Army — drawn mainly from Machar’s Nuer ethnic group — seized a town in Upper Nile State. In response, authorities detained several generals and ministers aligned with Machar’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition.
