Liberia has agreed to accept up to 1,200 third-country deportees from the United States in the next 12 months, the government said this week.
It said that the first group of 20 were expected to arrive on Thursday.
Donald Trump‘s administration has recently struck several deals with African countries to take in people it cannot legally send back to their home countries — typically because of US court orders ruling that doing so would put them in danger.
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What did Liberia say about the agreement?
“Liberia intends to accept up to 1,200 persons to be transferred from the United States of America within a year,” the Liberian government said in a statement published on Tuesday.
It said that the people would be received “as guests” and that they would be “free to depart the country when they so desire” or to apply for asylum.
The government’s statement said the deportees “will include citizens or nationals of African and Western Hemisphere countries who are medically authorized to travel.”
It said that the deal did not involve a quid pro quo with the US and that it was not demanding and had not received any direct compensation.
However, it also said that it would receive “support to help manage the program and strengthen its migration system more broadly,” without elaborating.
The statement also referenced Liberia’s 19th century history as a refuge for freed slaves from the US, and its “long history of accepting people seeking refuge from political and other crises.”
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Why is the US looking for support of this kind from African countries?
The announcement follows around a year after Liberian President Joseph Boakai visited the White House among a group of African leaders and held talks with Trump.
Seeking a way to deport would-be migrants that it cannot send back to their countries of origin — very often because of US courts ruling that doing so would put them at risk of torture or other abuses — the Trump administration has been seeking agreements with third countries willing to take some of the people.
The US government has defended such agreements as lawful, although some rights groups and advocates have said the details are often opaque and that many of the deportees are ultimately repatriated.
Beyond Monrovia’s description, no information was immediately available on where exactly the deportees hailed from.
Other African countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, Equatorian Guinea, Cameroon, Ghana and Sierra Leone have reached similar accords with the US.
The EU is currently looking into somewhat comparable plans that would allow member states to send rejected asylum seekers to so-called “return hubs” in third countries as part of bilateral or multilateral agreements, provided various conditions were met.
Edited by: Saim Dušan Inayatullah
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