The South Sudan foreign ministry is criticizing the revocation of U.S. visas for all its nationals, calling it unfair and saying it was based on an incident that didn’t involve one of its citizens but another African national.
On Saturday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. decided to revoke all visas for South Sudanese citizens because the country’s government failed to accept the return of its citizens being removed from the U.S. in a “timely matter.”
“It is time for the Transitional Government of South Sudan to stop taking advantage of the United States,” Rubio said in a statement. “Enforcing our nation’s immigration laws is critically important to the national security and public safety of the United States. 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 was the first such measure singling out all passport holders from a particular country since President Trump returned to the White House on Jan. 20, having campaigned on an anti-immigration platform.
No new visas will be issued, Rubio said, and “we will be prepared to review these actions when South Sudan is in full cooperation.”
In a statement on Monday, South Sudan’s Foreign Ministry said that the deportee who was denied U.S. entry on Friday was found to be a Congolese national and he was returned to the U.S. and all supporting evidence was shared with American officials.
“The government deeply regrets that despite this history of collaboration and partnership, South Sudan now faces a broad revocation of visas based on an isolated incident involving misrepresentation by an individual who is not a South Sudanese national,” the statement said.
South Sudan’s Information Minister Michael Makuei Lueth told The Associated Press on Monday that the U.S was “attempting to find faults with the tense situation” in the country because no sovereign nation would accept foreign deportees.
The United Nations in March warned that South Sudan was teetering on the edge of renewed civil war. The country’s vice president and main opposition leader Riek Machar remains under house on charges of incitement after an armed group allied to him overrun an army camp and attacked a U.N helicopter.
Around the same time, the U.S. State Department ordered the immediate departure of non-emergency personnel from the capital city of Juba, citing an increase in crime, kidnapping and armed conflict. The travel advisory level for South Sudan remains at Level 4, which means Americans should not travel to the African country.
South Sudanese nationals had been granted Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, by the Biden administration, with the designation set to expire on May 3, 2025.
The United States grants TPS, which shields people against deportation, to foreign citizens who cannot safely return home because of war, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions. But the Trump White House has begun overturning TPS designations, revoking protection in January from more than 600,000 Venezuelans.
It was not immediately clear how many South Sudanese hold U.S. visas. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said on social media the dispute centers on one person, certified by South Sudan’s Embassy in Washington, that Juba has refused to accept. That person was not named.
