South Sudan, Africa’s youngest country, is heading into the lean growing season, when hunger can peak. It is also embroiled in a nasty power brawl between its president and the vice president as fighting in the northeast escalates, driving people from their villages to survive. The country is experiencing its worst cholera outbreak in two decades while it has absorbed at least a million refugees fleeing the civil war raging in its northern neighbor, Sudan, since 2023.
In short, South Sudan is not an ideal destination for deportation. Yet, the United States is lashing out at the country amid the Trump administration’s overall war on immigration because of a technical muddle on a deportee. The transitional government of South Sudan itself may be edging into a civil war — again — with opponents, yet it quickly placated the US over the mix-up.
The confusion centers around one particular deportee involving not only the US and South Sudanese governments but also the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The mix-up prompted US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to announce suddenly that the US is banning visas of passport holders from South Sudan and will further restrict its nationals from entering the US because the East African government failed to accept the “return of its repatriated citizens in a timely manner,” he tweeted on April 5.
The warning was reinforced, partly in Trumpian capital letters, by the new US deputy secretary, Christopher Landau, who tweeted soon after Rubio’s statement that the South Sudanese government had violated its obligation “to accept repatriation of their own nationals” that were “certified by their own embassy in Washington” — a charge the South Sudanese dispute — and “effective immediately, 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.” (The tweet has since been deleted.)
The problem is that the deportee was sent with a travel document from South Sudan under the name of Nimeri Garang, but when he arrived at Juba International Airport on April 5 from the US, officials in Juba said that his name was Makula Kintu, from the Congo — not South Sudan — and that he was using a fake ID.
“It’s a big mix-up, but he contends he’s Congolese,” said Cecilia Adeng, the country’s permanent representative to the United Nations, in an interview on April 11 with PassBlue.
“Now, is that correct?,” Adeng added. “That’s what he said, even when we arrived at the airport, O.K.? And he admitted that his ID was fake.”
Adeng said the US Department of Homeland Security contends that Kintu and Nimeri are the same person. South Sudan officials say they are not. The government says it will further investigate. Washington has walked away from the matter. US paperwork from years earlier states that Kintu is Congolese.
He told South Sudanese officials when he arrived on April 5 in Juba that he was from Congo’s North Kivu Province — a region at war with the Rwandan-backed M23 militia — and was brought to South Sudan “against his will.”
A video of Kintu reportedly declaring he is Makula Kintu from Congo may be the “relevant video evidence” that South Sudan says it shared with the US ambassador in Juba and the US State Department to help solidify its case of mistaken identity of the man.
A South Sudanese government statement on April 7 said that “Nimeri Garang” — as he was identified on the national travel document — “IS NOT NIMERI GARANG” and that “comprehensive verification processes confirmed” he is Makula Kintu, a citizen of the Congo. It also says he was born in 1977. (A US Immigration and Customs Enforcement document dated June 16, 2021, says “Mr. GARANG” entered the US “at or near” Chicago on Dec. 12, 2019 “without inspection.”)
Additionally, South Sudanese officials say that the real Nimeri Garang had been scheduled for deportation from the US to South Sudan, arriving on May 13, 2025, by Egypt Air.
Soon after the diplomatic mess-up, President Salva Kiir of South Sudan dismissed his foreign affairs minister, Ramadan Mohamed Abdallah Goc, according to Sudans Post. The report said that although the reason for the dismissal was unclear, “it coincided with a diplomatic spat between South Sudan and the United States.”
The US, the report added, “claimed that Kintu had been certified as a South Sudanese citizen by the country’s embassy in Washington, a claim that Juba initially disputed.”
So, in the middle of the bleak crises plaguing South Sudan — including the possibility of another civil war, according to the UN — the man in question was sent back to the US on its own dime amid the outbursts by Rubio and his deputy.
“We are aware that South Sudan authorities have taken custody of their citizen whom they earlier failed to admit,” an unnamed State Department spokesperson said in an email to PassBlue on April 10 about the predicament. “At this time, we have no changes to announce. We will continue to make decisions regarding visa services around the world in a way that prioritizes upholding the highest standards for U.S. national security and public safety.”
South Sudan acknowledged in an additional statement that although the US was now banning visas for South Sudanese passport holders, the government “has consistently maintained open communication and cooperation with U.S. authorities regarding immigration and deportation matters.”
Further, Kintu is described in a US Department of Justice document from 2009 that he was not in the US with a valid document and had to be deported; he left voluntarily that year for Congo. It stated that he was a citizen of that country who had originally come into the US in 2003. (Other US paperwork shows says Kintu re-entered the country illegally years later and was told to leave in 2019, but one document is signed by Nimeri Garang.)
More head-spinning: A copy of Kintu’s application for an emergency travel document to be issued by the Embassy of South Sudan shows his picture, but it is unclear if he is the same person in the video. The document lists his name as Nimeri Garang, born in Juba in 1967. Adeng said the document could be fraudulent.
No explanations were given by the US for the recent deportations of numerous South Sudanese. Some South Sudanese were granted Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, most recently by President Joe Biden, enabling them to remain in the US until May 3, 2025.
African Communities Together and 62 other nongovernmental organizations sent a letter on Feb. 12 to the Trump administration urging the Department of Homeland Security to extend and redesignate South Sudan for TPS for 18 months, citing “escalating armed conflict, widespread mass displacement, devastating drought and climate shocks, and severe food insecurity continue to threaten millions of lives.”
It appears the extension was not granted.
Another possible reason for the recent deportations, Adeng said, is that tens of thousands of South Sudanese refugees who first came to the US about two decades ago, escaping civil war in Sudan (before it partitioned in two and the south became independent) may have never finished the required US paperwork to stay permanently. So, they could be facing deportation as a result. Adeng also suggested that some deportees could have been in trouble with the law for various reasons.
Adeng herself is a refugee from South Sudan who came with her family to the US in 1999. One of her brothers, also a refugee, is being deported from the US. She did not say why.
Nimeri is not a common South Sudanese surname, Adeng pointed out, noting that people’s last names are clearly linked to regional tribal lines in the country. He, too, may not be a citizen of the country.
After Rubio’s rebuke on April 5, the South Sudanese government said three days later that it would accept Kintu back in Juba, noting that “our competent authorities are therefore awaiting his arrival.”
Kintu was immediately put on a plane from the US — at South Sudan’s expense — and is back in Juba, detained by authorities as they investigate the mix-up. For now, Washington has washed its hands of the ordeal. The Congo denies Kintu is one of its own. (PassBlue was unable to elicit a response from the Congo embassy in Washington or its UN mission in New York City.)
From the start of the mess, the South Sudanese government strived to convince the US that it was operating in the “spirit of cooperation” regarding the deportee orders from Washington. South Sudan’s embassy there said it had issued “emergency travel documents” for 21 of the 23 individuals who had been named by the US to be sent to Juba; some have been successfully repatriated by South Sudan “without issue.” Two were identified as non-South Sudanese: Kintu and a man from Sudan — which is steeped in its own civil war.
Adeng said this is not the first time that South Sudanese in the US have been deported, noting that it happened under the Biden presidency. Yet, the current across-the-board ban is unprecedented.
Tammy Bruce, the US State Department spokesperson, was asked by a reporter why the US was canceling visas to passport holders from South Sudan amid the “danger” there. The White House is stepping up its anti-immigration agenda that Trump campaigned on during last year’s presidential bid.
“Every country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely manner when another country, including the United States, seeks to remove them,” Bruce said. “South Sudan’s Transitional Government has failed to fully respect this principle by not permitting the entry of an individual that they had confirmed and documented as a citizen.”
As a sign of the heightening dangers in South Sudan, the US ordered all its nonemergency staff in the country to leave in March as fighting broke out in the northeast, undermining a 2018 peace deal that ended a five-year civil war.
Cholera poses another fatal threat for South Sudanese. Save the Children, a British charity, said that eight people, including five children, died last month after walking three hours in overwhelming heat to seek treatment for cholera in Jonglei State, which is south of the restive Upper Nile State, as US aid cuts forced local health facilities to close.
The overall amount of US aid to South Sudan has dropped significantly this year so far, to $18 million, from about $705 million in 2024, according to “partially reported” data, with the humanitarian sector taking a huge hit.
Twenty-six years ago, Adeng arrived in the US at age nine with her six siblings and mother through a US government resettlement program assisted by the United Nations and other organizations. She and her family landed in Boise, Idaho, to a warm welcome that lasted throughout the rest of her childhood, she said.
Despite the Trump administration’s ban on South Sudan, Adeng remains grateful for the resettlement program that made it possible for her to thrive in Boise and the US. Her family’s escape from Africa meant leaving their father behind as he fought — and died — for South Sudan’s independence, which was granted in a national referendum in 2011. (Another war broke out in the country soon after it declared independence.)
In Boise, Adeng’s family was first hosted by three American families, one of which took them in their home for three months to help them learn English and adapt to their new world. The first time Adeng saw snow, she was “confused,” she said, wondering what was “falling from the sky.” Adeng’s family eventually moved into a four-bedroom apartment in the city.
It was a generous place for the African family. “The Calvary Chapel Church became our church family, our family church,” Adeng said. “And [we] would go there every weekend. We took church vacations.”
It’s a story, she noted, “of humanity at its best.”
Adeng has dual citizenship; she earned a master’s degree in public administration from Howard University and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Fisk University, both historically Black institutions in the US. She was named South Sudan’s ambassador to the UN last year, promoted from deputy permanent representative. Her three children attend New York City public schools, and her husband is also a South Sudanese refugee.
The US was deeply instrumental in South Sudan’s liberation struggle, helping to broker peace with Sudan, pressuring the parties to come into line, Adeng said. “All of that, including for South Sudan to be able to go for the referendum and actually choose their destination. All of that is attributed to the support of the US.”
“The US is a friend to South Sudan,” she added.
We welcome your comments on this article. What are your thoughts on the deportee mix-up?
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Dulcie Leimbach is a co-founder, with Barbara Crossette, of PassBlue. For PassBlue and other publications, Leimbach has reported from New York and overseas from West Africa (Burkina Faso and Mali) and from Europe (Scotland, Sicily, Vienna, Budapest, Kyiv, Armenia, Iceland, The Hague and Cyprus). She has provided commentary on the UN for BBC World Radio, ARD German TV and Radio, NHK’s English channel, Background Briefing with Ian Masters/KPFK Radio in Los Angeles and the Foreign Press Association.
Previously, she was an editor for the Coalition for the UN Convention Against Corruption; from 2008 to 2011, she was the publications director of the United Nations Association of the USA. Before UNA, Leimbach was an editor at The New York Times for more than 20 years. She began her reporting career in small-town papers in San Diego, Calif., and graduating to the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. Leimbach has been a fellow at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies as well as at Yaddo, the artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; taught news reporting at Hofstra University; and guest-lectured at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and the CUNY Journalism School. She graduated from the University of Colorado and has an M.F.A. in writing from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
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