US deportations to Africa violate law, HRW says

Human Rights Watch said Thursday that US deportations of migrants to third-party African countries violate international human rights law and use suffering as a deterrent to immigration.

The rights group said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement data show the United States has deported more than 500 people to African countries that were not their own since President Donald Trump’s administration signed accords with countries in Latin America, Africa and the Pacific to accept foreigners who could not legally be expelled to their own countries.

HRW said it interviewed 24 third-country nationals transferred from the United States to Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini and South Sudan. It said they described being chained during flights that could last up to 18 hours and not knowing their destination.

HRW also said Washington had sent at least a dozen LGBTQ people to African states that repress same-sex relations. The Forbidden Stories consortium estimated in September that 25,000 people had been expelled worldwide under the programme.

Burundi announced early this month that it had agreed to accept US deportees, becoming the 15th African nation to conclude such a deal.