Revealed On 20 Aug 2026
A primary group of deportees, out of an anticipated whole of 1,200, has landed on the Roberts Worldwide Airport in Monrovia, Liberia, from the USA.
Thursday’s flight is a part of an increasing development of third-country deportations below the administration of US President Donald Trump, whereby overseas nationals are despatched to nations that aren’t their very own.
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The inaugural flight carried 20 folks, largely from Latin American nations like Venezuela and Cuba.
After touchdown, the group boarded a bus and was taken away by Liberian authorities with out being allowed to talk to reporters.
The flight follows an settlement, introduced on Tuesday, between the US and Liberia that can carry as much as 1,200 deportees to the African nation over the approaching yr.
Liberia is a part of a rising record of nations placing agreements with the Trump administration.
Since taking workplace for a second time period as US president in 2025, Trump has inked offers with not less than 35 nations to simply accept third-country deportees, in keeping with the nonprofit Human Rights First.
In alternate, a few of these nations have acquired monetary assist and commerce offers. Senate Democrats in February estimated that not less than $40m had been spent on such offers within the first yr of Trump’s second time period.
The US, for instance, awarded Liberia $5m this yr for “migration administration actions”.
However in asserting the switch deal earlier this week, Liberia’s Ministry of Info denied any reviews that it agreed to the deportations for monetary motives.
“The switch of individuals to Liberia is just not a transaction with a quid professional quo,” the ministry mentioned in a statement. “Liberia has not demanded or acquired any compensation or promise of reward in alternate for its consent to take part in this system.”
Liberia’s Info Minister Jerolinmek Piah additionally instructed the information company Reuters that the Worldwide Group for Migration and the United Nations refugee company would assist present companies for the deportees.
These delivered to Liberia can be allowed to use for asylum and are “free to depart the nation once they so want”, in keeping with Tuesday’s assertion.
Liberia has mentioned that the deportees usually are not “criminals and usually are not being prosecuted in any method”.
“Liberia, the primary black African impartial nation on the African continent, has an extended historical past of accepting folks looking for refuge from political and different crises,” the ministry’s assertion mentioned.
“As a matter of truth, Liberia itself was based as a refuge for freed slaves from the USA of America and different elements of the world.”
However critics have questioned whether or not smaller nations in Africa and elsewhere are getting used as a “dumping ground” for US deportees, and whether or not the immigrants forcibly despatched overseas can have satisfactory entry to the sources they want.
Some have characterised such third-country deportations as excessively punitive, stranding migrants and asylum seekers in locations the place they generally can’t even converse the language.
The Trump administration, in the meantime, has framed the third-party deportations as obligatory for immigrants whose dwelling nations is not going to settle for them. It has additionally framed the removals as a type of deterrence.
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo on Thursday estimated that, this yr alone, roughly 2,300 Mexican residents have been deported from the US to his nation, versus being despatched on to Mexico.
Media retailers, together with CBS Information, have reported that the manouevre is a part of an effort to disincentivize Mexican nationals from returning to the US with out authorized immigration standing.
Arevalo defined, nonetheless, that such deportees are swiftly despatched again to Mexico. “They’re arriving in planes of Guatemalan returnees, and what we now have accomplished is course of them as in transit, in coordination with the Mexican immigration authorities,” he mentioned.
