Campaign group Human Rights Watch (HRW) says the deportation of migrants from the US to third-party African international locations is against the law and exploits struggling to deter migration.
“Many, if not most” of the deportees have no sensible option but to return to their home international locations regardless of the hurt they face there, HRW says in a report.
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025, more than 500 people have been despatched to African international locations where they are not residents, the group says, citing US knowledge.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said “third country removals are an essential public safety tool that remove the most dangerous criminal illegal aliens from our streets”.
Tackling immigration was one of Trump’s key pledges during the 2024 election.
Eswatini, which welcomed 32 deportees from the US, says three people – from Yemen, Belize and Laos – “voluntarily departed” to their home international locations not too long ago.
According to HRW, some of the international locations accepting the deportees have “arbitrarily detained” or despatched them to their home international locations, where they face “the risk of persecution or torture”.
The group said that people despatched to Eswatini, Ghana and South Sudan, had been arbitrarily detained and confronted ill-treatment while in detention.
In Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Ghana, the deportees had been despatched to their international locations of origin despite the risk of “violating the principle of nonrefoulement [that people should not be sent to a country where they face torture, cruel treatment, or threats to their life and freedom]”, it said.
The group cited an unnamed US official as having instructed a Senate listening to that the level for the administration was that it could “threaten people that they will literally be dropped in the middle of nowhere”.
“The point is to scare people,” HRW said.
“Deporting people to countries where they have never set foot is part of a US policy designed to cause human suffering as a means to deter migration,” said Michael Garcia Bochenek, the group’s interim US programme director.
In a assertion from to the BBC, DHS said: “ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is given diplomatic assurances from destination countries that the illegal aliens being removed there will be safe. When an individual is no longer in ICE custody, ICE is no longer responsible for them.”
None of the African international locations named has commented on the report.
Source hyperlink
