The United States on Saturday said it would revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders over its failure to accept the return of its repatriated citizens.<\/p>\n
Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the African nation\u2019s government of \u201ctaking advantage of the United States\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery country must accept the return of its citizens in a timely manner when another country, including the United States, seeks to remove them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The decision comes at a time when many in Africa fear that South Sudan could return to the civil war that killed 400,000 people between 2013 and 2018.<\/p>\n
Besides revoking visas, Rubio said Washington would block any new visas \u201cto prevent entry into the United States by South Sudanese passport holders\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added that the US would \u201cbe prepared to review these actions when South Sudan is in full cooperation”.<\/p>\n
Since taking office, US President Donald Trump’s administration has taken aggressive measures to ramp up immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n
This includes the repatriation of people deemed to be in the country illegally.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s predecessor, Joe Biden, had granted South Sudanese nationals \u201ctemporary protected status\u201d (TPS), with the designation set to expire on 3 May 2025.<\/p>\n
TPS shields people against deportation and is granted to foreign citizens who cannot safely return home because of war, natural disasters, or other \u201cextraordinary\u201d conditions.<\/p>\n
Last week, United Nations\u00a0Secretary-General Antonio Guterres\u00a0urged regional and international leaders to prevent South Sudan from falling \u201cover the abyss\u201d into\u00a0another civil war.<\/p>\n
African Union mediators arrived in the South Sudanese capital, Juba, this week for talks aimed at averting a new civil war.<\/p>\n
The increase in tensions comes after First Vice President Riek Machar was placed under house arrest last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The United States on Saturday said it would revoke all visas held by South Sudanese passport holders over its failure to accept the return of its repatriated citizens. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the African nation\u2019s government of \u201ctaking advantage of the United States\u201d. \u201cEvery country must accept the return of its citizens in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":10016,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"AP","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,33],"tags":[116,385],"class_list":["post-15842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-politics","tag-south-sudan","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}