What happened
Twenty migrants deported from the U.S. arrived in Liberia on Thursday, the first of 1,200 foreign nationals the West African country agreed to accept under a newly announced deal with the Trump administration. Most of the first migrants were from Venezuela, Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America, Liberian officials told Reuters.
The Trump administration on Thursday also sent its first deportation flight to Haiti since winning a court battle to lift Temporary Protected Status from more than 350,000 Haitians. The 161 deportees on board “included TPS holders” and people “not born in Haiti,” The Associated Press said, citing Haiti’s National Office of Migration. They were flown to the northern city of Cap-Haitien “because the main international airport in Port-au-Prince is considered too dangerous.”
Who said what
The Trump administration has secured third-country deals with an estimated 35 countries, including at least 12 in Africa. Many deportees are “asylum-seekers with U.S. court orders protecting them from being returned to their home countries because they could face persecution or torture,” the AP said. They often arrive in “countries they have never been to” and eventually are “left with little choice other than to return to the home countries they were fleeing from.” Five of the 20 detainees who arrived in Liberia “refused to deplane,” The New York Times said, and “had to be restrained for several minutes by American federal agents.”
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What next?
Liberia said the deportees would be received “as guests” who could leave “when they so desire” or apply for asylum. Other African countries taking third-country nationals have “made similarly humanitarian-sounding assurances,” The American Prospect said, but many of the deportees “end up living on the streets,” and some “have been imprisoned indefinitely without charge.”
