They asked the United States for protection and ended up in Monrovia, Yaoundé or Malabo, in countries many of them had never set foot in. In a report published on 8 October 2026, Human Rights Watch calls on Washington to stop deporting asylum seekers and refugees to third states that cannot guarantee a full and fair asylum procedure. The organisation also urges the governments involved to turn such arrivals away.
The system rests on bilateral agreements that are frequently kept secret. According to the Associated Press, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to some two dozen countries that are not their own, and nearly half of those deals involve Africa. The list includes Ghana, Rwanda, Uganda, South Sudan, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Sierra Leone, the DRC, Cameroon and, since August, Liberia.
Liberia has committed to receiving up to 1,200 people over one year. A first group of twenty deportees landed near Monrovia on 20 August. Liberian authorities describe the arrangement as humanitarian: the newcomers are said to be “guests”, free to apply for asylum locally or to leave. In Washington, the transfers are presented as a win for national security.
Human rights advocates paint a very different picture. In Cameroon, the Mandela Center International counts 36 people from nine African countries, flown in on four flights since January, and accuses the authorities of staying silent. In Ghana, at least 22 of the roughly thirty people received were reportedly sent straight back to their countries of origin, even though some held protection granted by US courts. Human Rights Watch further states that at least twelve LGBT people were sent to states that criminalise homosexuality.
Immigration lawyers see the mechanism as a legal workaround. What the law forbids doing directly, namely returning someone to persecution, would be achieved through a third country. For Human Rights Watch, the policy is designed to deter would-be migrants.
What do host states gain? Diplomatic sources quoted by the Wall Street Journal link the agreements to trade negotiations with Washington, and Equatorial Guinea reportedly secured 7.5 million dollars. Against that logic, the Mandela Center International is pressing the African Union to set up a monitoring mechanism and to bar its members from accepting such transfers. The continental body has yet to take a position.