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The United States has sanctioned three leaders of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group whose members have committed genocide in Sudan.
The trio of Elfateh Abdullah Idris Adam, Gedo Hamdan Ahmed Mohamed, and Tijani Ibrahim Moussa Mohamed hold self-titled ranks of Brigadier General and Field Commander.
Elfateh Abdullah Idris Adam, who brazenly filmed his atrocities, including executing civilians in El Fasher, was designated under Section 7031(c) for gross violations of human rights.
The RSF has perpetrated well-documented barbarity in Sudan since April 2023, after a power struggle within the government that seized power following the 2021 coup.
The U.S. said the RSF and allied militias engaged in killings, torture, and sexual violence in El Fasher during the months-long siege and capture in October 2025, targeting civilians based on their ethnicity and tribe.
Read Also: US Deports African Migrants To Cameroon After ICE Crackdown
The RSF also prevented food and other humanitarian assistance from entering the city, leading to famine and disease, a State Department readout notes.
America said it seeks a lasting peace in Sudan and an end to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, urging “the belligerents” to accept the U.S.-brokered humanitarian truce without preconditions.
Last November, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. was aware that multiple players were involved in the Sudanese crisis, and vowed that the Trump Administration would go after them.
The RSF attacks in late October 2025 left more than 400 dead, according to the World Health Organization. The victims included patients and companions at the Saudi Maternity Hospital in El Fasher.
The United Kingdom announced measures against four RSF leaders in December 2025. The European Union took a similar action in January 2026, sanctioning both RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) actors.
Eight migrants from Senegal, Sierra Leone and Ethiopia arrived in Cameroon on Wednesday after being expelled from the United States.
Cameroon is the latest of several African countries to receive foreigners expelled under US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, after Ghana, Eswatini, Rwanda, Equatorial Guinea and South Sudan.
Five men and three women arrived in Cameroon and were being held by the authorities in the capital Yaounde, said Alma David, a US immigration lawyer, and Joseph Fru Awah, a Cameroonian lawyer familiar with the case.
A United Nations source in Cameroon who asked not to be named confirmed the information to AFP.
No agreement governing such transfers between Cameroon and the United States has been made public by either country.
Another flight from Louisiana, with nine Africans expelled from the United States on board, arrived in Yaounde on January 14, the New York Times reported.
Since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, his administration has negotiated several expulsion agreements which have been fiercely criticised by rights groups.
It has sent foreigners to South Sudan, Eswatini and El Salvador, despite questions about their human rights records and although not all of those deported were from those countries.
The Trump administration spent at least $40 million to deport roughly 300 migrants to countries other than their own as immigration officials expanded the practice over the last year to carry out President Donald Trump’s goals of quickly removing immigrants from the U.S., according to a report compiled by the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The Democrats on the Foreign Relations panel, led by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, criticize the practice of third country deportations as “costly, wasteful and poorly monitored” in the report and call for “serious scrutiny of a policy that now operates largely in the dark.”
The State Department, which oversees the negotiations to implement the programs, has stood behind the practice of third country deportations and defended it as a part of Trump’s campaign to end illegal immigration.
“We’ve arrested people that are members of gangs and we’ve deported them. We don’t want gang members in our country,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded when asked about some of the third country deportations at a Senate hearing last month.
The report, which is the first congressional review of the agreements, found lump sum payments ranging between $4.7 million and $7.5 million to five countries — Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, El Salvador, Eswatini and Palau — to deport migrants to those nations. El Salvador has received about 250 Venezuelan nationals in March last year, while the other nations received far fewer deportees, ranging from 29 sent to Equatorial Guinea to none sent to Palau so far, according to the report.
The nations examined in the report are just a fraction of the Trump administration’s overall work to deport migrants to third countries. According to internal administration documents reviewed by The Associated Press, there are 47 third-country agreements at various stages of negotiation. Of those, 15 have been concluded and 10 are at or near conclusion.
The administration is also negotiating agreements with countries that will accept U.S. asylum seekers while their asylum claims are processed, according to the internal documents. There are 17 that are at various stages of negotiation, including 9 that have formally taken effect, although the administration claims that the agreements do not necessarily need to be concluded for people to be sent there.
Immigration advocacy groups have criticized the “third country” policy as a reckless tactic that violates due process rights and can strand deportees in countries with long histories of human rights violations and corruption.
During a visit to South Sudan, Democratic committee staff found a gated house with armed guards where deportees were held, including migrants from Vietnam and Mexico.
