Six deportees sent to Equatorial Guinea after refusing to disembark in Liberia
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Six people deported by the United States to Liberia last week resisted leaving the plane and were instead sent to Equatorial Guinea, another African nation that has a third-country deportation agreement with the Trump administration, according to a person on the plane and a lawyer in contact with the six.
The group that refused to get off the plane in Liberia on Thursday includes four Cuban men, a Brazilian man and a Cameroonian woman, the person and lawyer said.
A Honduran deportee aboard the flight said the group refused to disembark, saying Liberia was “not their country” and that they would face danger there. They were then separated from the other passengers, he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals.
The other passengers got off in Liberia because they feared officers would force them, he said.
Meredyth Yoon, litigation director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, said the deportees who resisted leaving the plane in Liberia were told they would be returned to the United States but instead were flown to Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea.
“It was a really heartbreaking and chaotic scene when they arrived in Malabo on Thursday,” Yoon said.
Some arrived in chains and in extreme distress, she said, including the Cameroonian woman and one of the Cuban men, who Yoon said has a large abdominal growth and uses a colostomy bag that must be drained regularly.
There is no medical staff at the hotel in Equatorial Guinea where the six are being held, alongside around 40 other deported migrants, she added.
Conditions at the hotel have worsened in recent months, Yoon said, with food sometimes withheld and guards accused of threatening, beating and choking migrants.
Equatorial Guinea’s government did not respond to a request for comment.
Background: third-country deportation agreements
Liberia has agreed to accept up to 1,200 third-country deportees from the United States, becoming one of several countries that have signed such removal agreements with the U.S. government.
Liberia’s Information Minister Jerolinmek Piah said the deportees will be treated as guests and are free to depart the country when they wish or apply for asylum. He stressed that the deportees are not criminals and are not being prosecuted.
Liberia has not demanded or received any compensation or promise of reward for accepting the deportees, Piah said.
Human Rights First, a nonprofit organization, tracked a third-country removal flight from Louisiana to Liberia, then to Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon. Savi Arvey, director of policy for refugee and immigrant rights at Human Rights First, said the flight carried 15 people to Liberia, 10 to Cameroon and 12 to Equatorial Guinea.
An Arizona man originally from Egypt is among several people sent to Equatorial Guinea who said they are held in a decommissioned hotel and subject to abuse by armed guards.
Broader context
The U.S. Senate’s foreign relations committee in February claimed the Trump administration had expanded a system of urging or coercing countries to accept migrants. The Trump administration has offered incentives including paying for foreign security forces and easing visa restrictions or tariffs, according to The New York Times.
According to Amnesty International, at least 30 countries have signed removal agreements with the U.S., including 12 African states.
The U.S. has deported thousands of people to two dozen countries that are not their own under often-secret agreements, advocates say. Immigration lawyers say the practice is being used as a legal loophole to indirectly return some asylum seekers to countries they fled.
The U.S. had agreed to send to Liberia Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully expelled to El Salvador, according to The New York Times.