{"id":391990,"date":"2026-08-23T17:57:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T17:57:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/391990\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T17:57:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T17:57:16","slug":"us-has-sent-deportees-to-many-african-countries-the-latest-one-being-liberia-heres-why-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/391990\/","title":{"rendered":"US has sent deportees to many African countries, the latest one being Liberia. Here\u2019s why."},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty migrants deported from the United States\u00a0arrived in Liberia<\/a>\u00a0on Thursday, the first group of an eventual 1,200 deportees that the West African country says it will receive from the U.S. under a new deal.<\/p>\n

Under a series of often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to\u00a0two dozen countries<\/a>\u00a0that aren\u2019t their own, as it pushes ahead with its\u00a0immigration crackdown<\/a>, advocates say.<\/p>\n

An estimated 11 of those agreements, nearly half the total, are with African countries and the Liberia-U.S. agreement involves one of the largest numbers of such third-country deportations<\/p>\n

Immigration lawyers say the practice is being used as a legal loophole to indirectly return some asylum-seekers to countries they fled. Authorities in Liberia have said the deportees being welcomed in their country can seek asylum there or leave if they choose.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what to know about the deportations:<\/p>\n

Why some African countries accept deportees<\/p>\n

\"PlaneA plane carrying the deportees from the US arrives at the Roberts International Airport outside of Monrovia, Liberia, on Aug. 20.AP<\/p>\n

Other African countries that have received third-country deportees from the U.S. include South Sudan, Eswatini, Rwanda, Ghana, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Congo, Uganda, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic.<\/p>\n

Some, like Ghana and\u00a0Sierra Leone<\/a>, are accepting deportees from their regions \u2014 in this case West Africa.<\/p>\n

Many of the African countries approving the deals are among the worst hit by the Trump administration\u2019s policies, including on trade, aid and migration. A good number of them also have authoritarian governments, raising questions about the lack of accountability and due process to ensure the protection of the deportees\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n

Details of most of the deals are never made public and some of the African nations, like\u00a0Ghana\u2019s government<\/a>, have defended their actions as having been taken on humanitarian grounds.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration had spent at least $40 million to deport about 300 migrants to countries other than their own, according to a February report by the Democratic staff of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. More countries have entered the deal since then.<\/p>\n

Congolese President F\u00e9lix Tshisekedi has described\u00a0his country\u2019s agreement<\/a>\u00a0as an \u201cact of goodwill between partners,\u201d without financial compensation. The deal came as Washington increased pressure on neighboring Rwanda over its support for M23 rebels, a dynamic analysts say may help explain Congo\u2019s willingness to cooperate.<\/p>\n

Many are asylum-seekers<\/p>\n

Early flights to Africa included people that the U.S. said had convictions for serious crimes. But later transfers have included asylum-seekers with U.S. court orders protecting them from being\u00a0returned to their home countries<\/a>\u00a0because they could face persecution or torture.<\/p>\n

Many say they\u2019ve been sent to countries with which they have no ties and where they were not told about until hours into the deportation journey.<\/p>\n

Related | ICE finds heinous new way to spend millions and terrorize people<\/a><\/p>\n

For instance,\u00a0a gay Moroccan woman deported to Cameroon<\/a>, where homosexuality is illegal, and\u00a0an Iranian woman<\/a>\u00a0with U.S. court protection from returning to Iran who was sent to the Central African Republic.<\/p>\n

Immigration lawyer Alma David called that an effective legal \u201cloophole,\u201d saying deportees can be left with \u201cimpossible choices\u201d \u2014 remain in an unfamiliar country with little support or return to a country a U.S. judge found unsafe.<\/p>\n

U.S. policy says that when a receiving government gives blanket diplomatic assurances that deportees won\u2019t face persecution there, they can be removed without additional procedures, David told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

Conditions vary in different countries<\/p>\n

Some of the deportees have recounted being shackled while some were held in\u00a0full-body restraint straitjackets<\/a>\u00a0called the WRAP during flights that can sometimes last more than 16 hours.<\/p>\n

Their conditions in the different countries vary. In Sierra Leone, the government hired private contractor Kenvah Solutions to provide housing, food and healthcare.<\/p>\n

Related | Let\u2019s check in on where Trump is deporting people this month<\/a><\/p>\n

In Congo, the International Organization for Migration said it has provided \u201chumanitarian assistance\u201d and offered assisted voluntary return to the migrants\u2019 home countries. But deportees\u00a0told the AP their movements were tightly controlled<\/a>. They were housed behind locked gates, could not leave alone and were allowed out roughly once a week accompanied by IOM staff.<\/p>\n

In Equatorial Guinea, the AP found deportees confined in\u00a0a hotel owned by the family<\/a>\u00a0of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Migrants said they were barred from leaving, had uneven access to medical care and faced repeated pressure to return home. Twenty-five of at least 32 people held there had been sent to their home countries by May.<\/p>\n

Deportations have led to lawsuits and human rights concerns<\/p>\n

Rights advocates say the third-country deportation program risks violating non-refoulement, the principle barring governments from sending people to places where they face persecution or torture.<\/p>\n

An\u00a0international coalition sued Ghana<\/a>\u00a0in June on behalf of 27 deportees, alleging most were quickly sent to their home countries, despite U.S. protection orders, and that some were held under armed guard in military camps, hotels and airport cells.<\/p>\n

Related | Ousted by the Trump administration, US immigrants remain locked up in African kingdom<\/a><\/p>\n

Rights lawyers have also\u00a0brought a case against Equatorial Guinea<\/a>\u00a0before the African Commission on Human and Peoples\u2019 Rights, alleging deportees were returned to countries where they faced persecution despite U.S. court protections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Twenty migrants deported from the United States\u00a0arrived in Liberia\u00a0on Thursday, the first group of an eventual 1,200 deportees…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[63,70858,1747,8544],"class_list":["post-391990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-africa","tag-africa","tag-deportations","tag-immigration","tag-liberia"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@africa\/117146121050173729","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}