Afghans, Cubans and others sent to Africa as Trump expands 'third-country' deportations

WASHINGTON, DC: The Trump administration’s “third-country” deportation plan expanded with the deportation of hundreds of Afghan, Cuban, and other immigrants to several African nations.

Scores of immigrants from Afghanistan and several other countries took shelter in the United States for multiple reasons, including instability and an unsafe environment in their home countries.

Now ICE has sought to send these immigrants to "third countries" instead of their homeland because their home countries are either unsafe or refused to take them back.

ICE deports immigrants to African countries

According to internal US government documents obtained by CBS News, over a period of 10 days the Trump administration sent more than 100 deportees from Afghanistan, Cuba, Nicaragua, and other nations to eight countries across Africa, expanding its "third country" deportation campaign.

Three deportation flights carrying dozens of men and women expelled from the US landed in African countries, dropping the deportees in Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Liberia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone.

Notably, none of the deportees were from the countries where they were sent.

Apart from Afghan and Cuban deportees, ICE flights over the past week and a half included deportees from Iran, Nepal, Turkey, and Venezuela, as well as African detainees who are not from the nations where they were sent.

Under the third-country agreements, more than 30 countries across the globe have agreed to receive such deportations from the US, including some in Latin America like Costa Rica, Panama, and Paraguay.

Unstable countries are making 'third-country' deals with the US

A third-country deportation agreement is an official pact between two nations that allows one country to deport a migrant to a completely different nation where they hold no citizenship, family, or prior ties.

More African countries are now making these agreements with the US, including nations like the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan, countries that have faced armed conflict, political instability and human rights concerns.

The international agreements have largely been shrouded in secrecy, but some countries, like Ghana and Sierra Leone, have reportedly only agreed to accept deportees from other places in Africa.

The latest of three ICE flights to Africa dropped off detainees in Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic, where longstanding armed conflict and Russian mercenaries have made the landlocked country one of the most dangerous in the world.