December 2025 Policy Developments and Implications

This Article was finalized prior to breaking developments on December 19-20, 2025, revealing a significant policy shift by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security regarding third-country transfers to Uganda under the Asylum Cooperation Agreement (ACA). According to internal DHS guidance obtained by The New York Times, DHS issued a directive on Friday, December 19, 2025, restricting Uganda-bound asylum pretermit motions to “immigrants from most other African nations” only and requiring attorneys to “expeditiously move to withdraw” all previously filed motions involving non-African nationals.[1] This directive included the high-profile case of Heng Guan, a Chinese dissident who documented Uyghur surveillance and faced removal to Uganda despite U.S. recognition of the underlying abuses as “genocide.”[2]

This development directly mitigates immediate risks for Russian political dissidents, anti-war activists, and conscription avoiders—the Article’s primary focus—as they would no longer qualify for Uganda transfers under current DHS policy. However, this geographic restriction validates rather than resolves the core concerns raised herein, while creating new vulnerabilities through alternative third-country destinations. The shift represents a tacit acknowledgment by U.S. authorities of the fundamental inadequacies in Uganda’s capacity to provide effective protection for politically sensitive populations facing transnational repression risks. 

Validation of the Article’s Core Thesis: Uganda’s Inadequacy as a Safe Receiving Country

The DHS directive operationalizes Uganda’s August 2025 statement expressing a “preference” for African transferees, effectively transforming this preference into a binding requirement. This confirms the Article’s central argument: even the sending state recognizes practical limitations in Uganda’s willingness or capacity to receive certain populations—particularly those whose cases carry heightened diplomatic sensitivity or surveillance risks from powerful foreign states like Russia or China. 

While the directive does not explicitly cite transnational repression concerns, its timing and scope strongly suggest implicit recognition of the vulnerabilities outlined in Part IV. The Guan case is paradigmatic: a dissident who documented human rights abuses deemed “genocide” by the U.S. government was slated for transfer to Uganda, where China has “considerable political and economic clout.”[2] The reversal suggests DHS recognized—whether through internal review, external pressure, congressional scrutiny, or litigation risk—that such a transfer would expose Guan to precisely the transnational repression dynamics this Article describes: surveillance, informal cooperation between security services, and predictable pathways back into the persecutor’s reach. 

Persistence of Systemic Problems and Alternative Destination Risks

Critically, the Uganda-specific restriction does not eliminate broader third-country transfer risks for Russian dissidents or cure fundamental defects in the ACA system. Three concerns merit immediate attention: 

A. Mass Implementation and Alternative Destinations

The Times analysis documents a massive surge in pretermit motions: nearly 5,000 filed in November 2025 alone, compared to a few hundred per month during summer 2025.[1] DHS guidance instructs prosecutors to “list as many third-country agreements as possible for a given immigrant,” meaning Russian dissidents may still face removal to Honduras, Ecuador, Guatemala, or other countries with ACAs.[1] As the Times notes, these agreements encompass “a host of less stable nations: Ecuador, Guatemala and Honduras, all of which have endured high levels of gang violence, and Uganda, which has a checkered human rights record and borders conflict regions in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”[1] 

The effective protection analysis in Part V applies with equal force to these destinations. At least 230 non-Honduran asylum seekers were ordered expelled to Honduras in November 2025 alone, raising identical questions: Can Honduras provide meaningful access to asylum procedures for Russian-speakers? Does it have institutional capacity to protect politically sensitive dissidents from surveillance? Can it resist diplomatic pressure from states seeking to locate and punish opponents abroad? The answer to each remains no. 

B. Policy Instability and Lack of Structural Safeguards

The Uganda directive is internal DHS policy, not statutory or treaty-based protection. It could be revised or rescinded, particularly given the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to clear a nearly 4-million-case asylum backlog through mass dismissals without hearings. This underscores the ad hoc nature of these arrangements: while it protects non-Africans temporarily, it leaves African nationals—potentially including those fleeing Russian influence in conflict zones bordering Uganda—exposed to the dangers outlined herein. Moreover, it does not address Russian dissidents who may have African citizenship or dual nationality. 

C. Procedural Barriers and Multiplication of Protection Burdens

The Times reporting provides empirical validation of the “soft refoulement” framework developed in Part III. Immigration attorneys report receiving “little notice of the new government motions” and not receiving “copies of the third-country agreements, making it difficult to identify potential exceptions.”[1] One asylum seeker in Virginia learned “a day before his final hearing” that the government sought Honduras removal rather than adjudicating his Ecuador-based persecution claim.[1] This eleventh-hour motion practice exemplifies the procedural coercion that severs access to counsel and evidence, undermining claims in receiving countries. 

Immigration Judge Karen Nazaire-Francois articulated the constrained judicial environment: “I cannot make a decision on whether or not I think it’s fair or legal… I have no choice under the board’s decision.”[1] This confirms that the Board of Immigration Appeals’ October 2025 decision in Matter of C-I-G-M- & L-V-S-G– effectively prevents individual judges from assessing country-specific safety concerns, even when evidence suggests the third country cannot provide effective protection. 

As attorney Keren Zwick observed: “People are now in a position of having to show they fear persecution in five countries at the same time.”[1] This multiplication of protection burdens—requiring simultaneous proof of harm in the country of origin and multiple third countries—inverts the refugee protection framework and creates procedural barriers functionally equivalent to refoulement. 

Empirical Support for the “Soft Refoulement” Model

Data visualization published with the Times article reveals systematic rather than individualized implementation. The dramatic acceleration of pretermit motions followed two key policy shifts: April 11, 2025 (judges directed to deny hearings for applications deemed unlikely to succeed) and October 31, 2025 (judges directed to dismiss claims for third-country removal).[1] The November 2025 spike to nearly 5,000 motions demonstrates expedited removal regardless of individualized protection needs—precisely the “constructive pressure” toward return that Parts III and VI identify as soft refoulement. 

Implications for Russian Dissidents and the Effective Protection Test

The directive validates the effective protection test proposed in Part V: any third-country transfer must demonstrate robust safeguards against onward harm, not just nominal asylum access. For Russian dissidents facing alternative ACAs, the same structural deficiencies apply: surveillance-enabled environments, weak institutional protections, linguistic and procedural barriers, and diplomatic pressures that can facilitate rather than prevent transnational repression. 

If DHS policy evolves to include non-Africans in Uganda transfers again, or if alternative destinations replicate Uganda’s surveillance infrastructure and foreign entanglements, the Article’s analysis becomes directly applicable. Indeed, some alternative destinations may present worse conditions: Honduras and Guatemala face higher levels of organized violence, weaker rule of law, and documented vulnerabilities to external security pressures. 

Ongoing Litigation and Calls for Transparency

Federal litigation challenging ACA legality—originally filed during Trump’s first administration as U.T. v. Barr and resurrected in September 2025—remains active. Plaintiffs argue these agreements violate the Immigration and Nationality Act’s “safe third country” provision and shirk U.S. non-refoulement obligations under international refugee and human rights law.[3] The suit contends that forcing asylum seekers to prove fear of persecution in multiple countries simultaneously constitutes unlawful burden-shifting. 

Critically, ACA texts and implementing details remain largely undisclosed, preventing asylum seekers and counsel from identifying potential exceptions or challenging designations. This opacity compounds procedural barriers and undermines meaningful review—a concern heightened by judges’ statements that they “have no choice” but to approve transfers. 

Updated Conclusion

The December 2025 DHS directive provides partial validation of this Article’s thesis while underscoring the persistence of systemic defects. The directive demonstrates that even the sending state recognizes Uganda’s unsuitability for populations facing sophisticated transnational repression—an implicit acknowledgment of the surveillance, institutional weakness, and foreign entanglement concerns detailed in Parts II-IV. 

However, this geographic carve-out neither cures ACA structural problems nor protects Russian dissidents from functionally equivalent risks in Honduras, Ecuador, Guatemala, or other third countries. The effective protection test outlined in Part V must be applied rigorously to all proposed transfers. Courts and policymakers should reject diplomatic assurances as sufficient and demand evidence of actual, enforceable protection accounting for political dissidents’ specific vulnerabilities when fleeing authoritarian states with global reach. 

The withdrawal of Uganda motions demonstrates that sustained scrutiny can produce policy changes. Advocates must continue demanding this level of analysis for all third-country destinations, monitoring implementation to ensure withdrawals extend to Russian and other non-African cases, and pushing for transparency in ACA details. Future research should track whether alternative destinations are subjected to similar geographic restrictions when evidence emerges of inadequate protection, and whether litigants successfully challenge the multiplication of protection burdens as violating non-refoulement principles. 

Above all, the directive reinforces this Article’s fundamental point: asylum law’s core promise is protection from persecution, not relocation into new zones of vulnerability. Any third-country transfer framework that cannot reliably prevent onward harm—whether through direct refoulement or soft refoulement via surveillance, procedural barriers, or diplomatic pressure—fails to satisfy international legal obligations and exposes vulnerable populations to the very dangers refugee law exists to prevent. 

Footnotes

  1. Jazmine Ulloa, Allison McCann & Hamed Aleaziz, Trump Administration Pushes Asylum Seekers to Apply in Other Countries, N.Y. Times (Dec. 20, 2025)
  2. U.S. Drops Uganda Deportation Order Against Chinese Dissident, Lawyer Says, Reuters (Dec. 19, 2025)
  3. See U.T. v. Bondi, No. 1:20-cv-00116 (D.D.C. filed Sept. 8, 2025) (amended complaint challenging ACAs with Honduras, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Uganda).