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US revokes all visas for South Sudanese over country’s failure to repatriate citizens Washington revokes all South Sudanese visas in repatriation row
(about 16 hours later)
State department ‘taking actions to revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders and prevent further entry’, secretary of state says State department accuses east African country of ‘taking advantage of the United States’
Washington is revoking all visas for South Sudanese passport holders and blocking new arrivals, secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Saturday, complaining the African nation is not accepting its nationals expelled from the US. The US is revoking the visas of all South Sudanese passport-holders and will stop any more of its citizens entering the country.
The state department “is taking actions to revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders and prevent further issuance to prevent entry”, Rubio said in a statement. The Department of State said South Sudan was “taking advantage of the United States” by failing to comply with US efforts to return people to the east African country, adding that the measures would come into effect immediately.
It was the first such measure singling out all passport holders from a particular country since Donald Trump returned to the White House on 20 January, having campaigned on an anti-immigration platform. “Every country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely manner when another country, including the United States, seeks to remove them,” it said.
Rubio accused the transitional government in Juba of “taking advantage of the United States”, saying that “every country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely manner when another country … seeks to remove them.” Christopher Landau, the deputy secretary of state, said the dispute related to one alleged South Sudanese national and claimed efforts to engage diplomatically with the South Sudanese government had been rebuffed.
Washington “will be prepared to review these actions when South Sudan is in full cooperation”, Rubio added. “All visa appointments are cancelled, no new visas will be issued, no existing visas will be effective, and hence NO ONE from South Sudan will be entering the United States on a visa until this matter is resolved,” he said in a social media post.
The world’s newest country and also one of the poorest, South Sudan is currently prey to tensions between political leaders. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, said Washington would “be prepared to “review these actions when South Sudan is in full cooperation”.
Some observers fear a renewal of the civil war that killed 400,000 people between 2013 and 2018. Donald Trump, who campaigned during the US election on an anti-immigration platform, has pursued various methods to remove foreign nationals from the US since returning to the White House, but the move against US-based South Sudanese is the first time he has targeted a group by citizenship with such a blanket measure.
South Sudanese nationals had been granted “temporary protected status” (TPS) by the administration of Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden, with the designation set to expire on 3 May 2025. South Sudan nationals in the US were granted “temporary protected status” by the Obama administration in 2011 on the grounds that the country was unsafe because of fighting that started after it declared independence from Sudan. A TPS designation means individuals cannot be removed from the US and are granted the right to work and the ability to travel.
The US grants TPS, which shields people against deportation, to foreign citizens who cannot safely return home because of war, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions. The designation was extended by the Biden administration last September but is set to expire next month. The Department of Homeland Security said 133 people from South Sudan were on the TPS programme last year.
There were about 133 South Sudanese in the US under the TPS program, with another 140 eligible to apply, the Department of Homeland Security said in September 2023. Trump has been pushing to end TPS designations for a handful of countries including Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, potentially affecting half a million people. A judge last month paused plans to end the legal protections for Venezuelans.
But the Trump White House has begun overturning TPS designations, revoking protection in January from more than 600,000 Venezuelans. What was a simmering conflict in South Sudan has threatened to intensify, with forces loyal to President Salva Kiir facing off with backers of his rival, vice-president Riek Machar.
A federal judge this week put that decision on hold after calling into question the government’s claims that the majority of Venezuelans in the US were criminals. Conflict between Kiir and Machar, who come from the country’s largest ethnic groups, the Dinka and Nuer, cost 400,000 lives during a five-year civil war which begun in 2013. Uganda and Sudan mediated a ceasefire in 2018 with cabinet and state positions distributed between their factions.
According to the Pew Research Center, as of March 2024 there were 1.2 million people eligible for or receiving TPS in the US, with Venezuelans making up the largest group. “South Sudan has been in a state of civil conflict since its creation and the only difference is whether the conflict has been open or smouldering beneath the surface,” said Mukesh Kapila, an academic who was the UN head in Sudan in 2004. He added that the underlying issues between the two leaders were never properly resolved.
The Trump administration’s singling out of South Sudan also comes after growing numbers of Africans attempted to enter the US via its southern border – an alternative to risky routes into Europe. The agreement faced a major stress test when the civil war in Sudan halted South Sudan’s oil exports, which account for about 70% of its budget. More than 600,000 people from Sudan have also sought refuge in South Sudan further straining the country’s limited resources.
The country’s financial challenges, which meant many in the public sector were not paid for close to a year, have been compounded by renewed hostilities between the supporters of Kiir and Machar.
Machar was placed under house arrest last month along with his wife, Angelina Teny, who is the interior minister. Officials from his party said this effectively ended the 2018 peace agreement. In the weeks leading up to Machar’s arrest several of his associates were removed from office.
Kapila warned it was a dangerous situation but “with the other problems in the world, I’m not sure anyone is currently bothered to stop the momentum toward conflict”.