A first group of deportees, out of an expected total of 1,200, has landed at the Roberts International Airport in Monrovia, Liberia, from the United States.
Thursday’s flight is part of an expanding trend of third-country deportations under the administration of US President Donald Trump, whereby foreign nationals are sent to countries that are not their own.
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The inaugural flight carried 20 people, largely from Latin American countries like Venezuela and Cuba.
After landing, the group boarded a bus and was taken away by Liberian authorities without being allowed to speak to reporters.
The flight follows an agreement, announced on Tuesday, between the US and Liberia that will bring up to 1,200 deportees to the African country over the coming year.
Liberia is part of a growing list of countries striking agreements with the Trump administration.
Since taking office for a second term as US president in 2025, Trump has inked deals with at least 35 countries to accept third-country deportees, according to the nonprofit Human Rights First.
In exchange, some of those countries have received financial aid and trade deals. Senate Democrats in February estimated that at least $40m had been spent on such deals in the first year of Trump’s second term.
The US, for example, awarded Liberia $5m this year for “migration management activities”.
But in announcing the transfer deal earlier this week, Liberia’s Ministry of Information denied any reports that it agreed to the deportations for financial motives.
“The transfer of persons to Liberia is not a transaction with a quid pro quo,” the ministry said in a statement. “Liberia has not demanded or received any compensation or promise of reward in exchange for its consent to participate in the program.”
Liberia’s Information Minister Jerolinmek Piah also told the news agency Reuters that the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations refugee agency would help provide services for the deportees.
Those brought to Liberia will be allowed to apply for asylum and are “free to depart the country when they so desire”, according to Tuesday’s statement.
Liberia has said that the deportees are not “criminals and are not being prosecuted in any manner”.
“Liberia, the first black African independent nation on the African continent, has a long history of accepting people seeking refuge from political and other crises,” the ministry’s statement said.
“As a matter of fact, Liberia itself was founded as a refuge for freed slaves from the United States of America and other parts of the world.”
But critics have questioned whether smaller countries in Africa and elsewhere are being used as a “dumping ground” for US deportees, and whether the immigrants forcibly sent abroad will have adequate access to the resources they need.
Some have characterised such third-country deportations as excessively punitive, stranding migrants and asylum seekers in places where they sometimes cannot even speak the language.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has framed the third-party deportations as necessary for immigrants whose home countries will not accept them. It has also framed the removals as a form of deterrence.
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo on Thursday estimated that, this year alone, roughly 2,300 Mexican citizens have been deported from the US to his country, as opposed to being sent directly to Mexico.
Media outlets, including CBS News, have reported that the manouevre is part of an effort to disincentivize Mexican nationals from returning to the US without legal immigration status.
Arevalo explained, however, that such deportees are swiftly sent back to Mexico. “They are arriving in planes of Guatemalan returnees, and what we have done is process them as in transit, in coordination with the Mexican immigration authorities,” he said.
