Britain’s closest ally, America, has criticised Rwanda’s dire human rights record describing conditions in the country’s detention centres as harsh and life-threatening. Home secretary, Suella Braverman, took a group of journalists on a trip to Rwanda to reveal details of her £120m scheme to send illegal migrants there. The scheme requires all migrants arriving in the UK through irregular means, whether they claim asylum or not, to be deported there. The legality of the scheme will be tested shortly in the UK court of appeal. But the US human rights assessment published on March 21st said Rwanda operated a system of harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, arbitrary detention, serious restrictions on free expression, imprisonment of journalists, and no effective system of collective bargaining. Braverman has dismissed the UK critics of Rwanda as a ‘left-wing blob’, but it may be harder to dismiss the documented findings from the UK’s closest ally.