The Trump administration has sent its first group of so-called “third-country” deportees to Liberia. Third-country deportees are people who are deported to a country that is not their own.
About 20 people from different countries landed outside Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, on Thursday. CBS News reports a small group refused to get off the plane and had to be escorted off by U.S. officials. They later returned to the plane and CBS says their whereabouts were not immediately known.
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Liberia has agreed to take up to 1,200 third-country deportees from the U.S. over the next year, including people from other parts of Africa, North and South America and the Caribbean. They will be allowed to apply for asylum in Liberia.
Liberia is also where the Trump administration is trying to send Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador last year and then returned to the U.S. to face human-smuggling charges. A federal judge has blocked that deportation for now.
The Trump administration has made third country deportation deals with dozens of countries worldwide. They include African countries plagued by armed conflict, political tumult and human rights abuses, including South Sudan, the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to CBS.
More than 23,000 people have been deported to 26 countries under the agreement, The Associated Press reports.
Haitians deported
In a separate immigration move Thursday, the U.S. deported more than 160 people to Haiti.
They are the first group sent back since the trump administration won its legal fight to end temporary protected status for some 350,000 Haitians. The group included people who had been protected under TPS along with other Haitian nationals, including some who had served prison sentences.
“It is not the Haitian state that asks for them to be sent back,” Jean Négot Bonheur Delva, director general of Haiti’s National Office of Migration, said. “Our mission is to welcome migrants of forced return… We welcome them with the aim of accompanying them to their home.”
Delva told NBC News that some of the deportees were not born in Haiti, but they are of Haitian descent.
Round out your reading
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- Photos and video show exactly where and when Trump visited Ground Zero after 9/11.
