US deportations to African countries unlawful and exploit suffering, rights group says

Campaign radical Human Rights Watch (HRW) says the deportation of migrants from the US to third-party African countries is against the instrumentality and exploits suffering to deter migration. "Many, if not most" of the deportees person nary applicable enactment but to instrumentality to their location countries careless of the harm they look there, HRW says successful a report. Since Donald Trump returned to the White House successful 2025, much than 500 radical person been sent to African countries wherever they are not citizens, the radical says, citing US data. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said "third state removals are an indispensable nationalist information instrumentality that region the astir unsafe transgression amerciable aliens from our streets". Tackling migration was 1 of Trump's cardinal pledges during the 2024 election. Eswatini, which welcomed 32 deportees from the US, says 3 radical - from Yemen, Belize and Laos - "voluntarily departed" to their location countries recently. According to HRW, immoderate of the countries accepting the deportees person "arbitrarily detained" oregon sent them to their location countries, wherever they look "the hazard of persecution oregon torture". The radical said that radical sent to Eswatini, Ghana and South Sudan, had been arbitrarily detained and faced ill-treatment portion successful detention. In Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Ghana, the deportees had been sent to their countries of root contempt the hazard of "violating the rule of nonrefoulement [that radical should not beryllium sent to a state wherever they look torture, cruel treatment, oregon threats to their beingness and freedom]", it said. The radical cited an unnamed US authoritative arsenic having told a Senate proceeding that the constituent for the medication was that it could "threaten radical that they volition virtually beryllium dropped successful the mediate of nowhere". "The constituent is to scare people," HRW said. "Deporting radical to countries wherever they person ne'er acceptable ft is portion of a US argumentation designed to origin quality suffering arsenic a means to deter migration," said Michael Garcia Bochenek, the group's interim US programme director. In a connection from to the BBC, DHS said: "ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is fixed diplomatic assurances from destination countries that the amerciable aliens being removed determination volition beryllium safe. When an idiosyncratic is nay longer successful ICE custody, ICE is nay longer liable for them." None of the African countries named has commented connected the report. Read the full story at BBC News →