Congo

Multiple burials have been reported by locals

At least 80 deaths have been reported as a country battles an outbreak of a highly contagious disease.

The deaths were confirmed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s new Ebola disease outbreak in the eastern Ituri province, authorities said, as health workers raced to intensify screening and contact tracing to contain the disease. Officials first announced the outbreak on Friday, with 65 deaths and 246 suspected cases. Meanwhile, journalists in Ituri’s capital, Bunia, interviewed local people who recounted their fears and constant burials.

“Every day, people are dying … and this has been going on for about a week. In a single day, we bury two, three, or even more people,” said Jean Marc Asimwe, a resident of Bunia. “At this point, we don’t really know what kind of disease it is.”

Congolese health minister Samuel-Roger Kamba said late on Friday that there have been eight laboratory-confirmed cases, among them four deaths. Test results confirmed the Bundibugyo virus, a variant of the disease that has been less prominent in Congo’s past outbreaks.

This is the country’s 17th outbreak since Ebola first emerged in the country in 1976, the Associated Press reproted. Ebola is highly contagious and can be contracted through bodily fluids such as vomit, blood, or semen. The disease it causes is rare, but severe and often fatal.

The suspected index case in the latest outbreak is a nurse who died at a hospital in Bunia, Mr Kamba said, with the case dating back three weeks to April 24. He did not say whether samples from the nurse were tested, but said the person presented symptoms suggestive of Ebola.

DR Congo has experience in managing Ebola outbreaks, but often faces logistical challenges in getting expertise and supplies to affected regions. As Africa’s second-largest country by land area, Congo’s provinces are far from one another and mostly battling conflict. Ituri, for instance, is around 620 miles from the nation’s capital, Kinshasa, and is ravaged by violence from Islamic State-backed militants.

The disease is so far confirmed in three health zones in the Ituri province, including the capital city, Bunia, as well as in Rwampara and Mongwalu where the outbreak is concentrated.

Foreign Office advice for Democratic Republic of the Congo

As of Saturday afternoon, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office had not given specific advice about travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in regards to the Ebola outbreak.

Its current advice, which it said remained valid on May 16, was that UK citizens should avoid travel to muliple parts of the country due to political instability.

It said: “If you are in North or South Kivu and judge it safe to do so, and if routes are available, you should leave. M23 rebels and Rwanda Defence Forces (RDF) have captured the cities of Goma and Bukavu and the surrounding areas in North and South Kivu. M23 rebels and RDF captured the city of Uvira in December 2025, and then withdrew from the city in January 2026, though clashes continue in the surrounding areas. The situation remains highly unstable and unpredictable. Routes to depart Uvira, Goma and Bukavu are limited and may change at short notice.

“The border crossings between Rwanda and the DRC at Gisenyi-Goma and Ruzizi-Bukavu could close at short notice. Goma and Bukavu airports have been attacked and commercial flights are no longer operating from the airports.

“Support from the UK government is severely limited outside Kinshasa. You should not assume that FCDO will be able to provide assistance to leave the country in the event of serious unrest or crisis.”

The FCDO advises against all but essential travel to:

• The districts of N’djili and Kimbanseke in Kinshasa city south of the main access road to N’djili airport, in Nsele commune
• The N1 road in Kinshasa Province, between and including Menkao to the west, Kenge to the east, the border of Mai-Ndombe province to the north, and 10km to the south

The FCDO advises against all travel to within 50km of the border with the Central African Republic and to the provinces of:

• Haut-Uélé and Ituri, including the entire DRC-South Sudan border
• North Kivu
• South Kivu
• Maniema
• Tanganyika
• Haut-Lomami

It also advises against all travel to the Kwamouth territory of Mai-Ndombe Province. This is between, and including, the towns of Kwamouth, Bandundu and the southern border of Mai-Ndombe province. Further, it advises against all travel to the province of Kasaï Oriental and against all but essential travel to the provinces of Kasaï and Kasaï Central and to Bangoka International Airport in Kisangani.

DAKAR, Senegal — It’s an existence that Congo’s president has described as “living the Congolese dream.” For the 15 Latin Americans deported to the African nation under the Trump administration’s widely criticized crackdown on migrants, it feels more like a nightmare.

The Associated Press spoke with one, a 29-year old Colombian woman who confirmed what people deported to other African nations have described: A shackled deportation despite a U.S. immigration judge’s protection order. Confinement in a hotel with supervised outings.

And an impossible choice: Return to a home country with the risk of persecution or stay in Congo, a country the Colombian woman had never heard of before she arrived.

“They treat us like we’re children,” she said as their three-month Congolese visas near an end, with no plan in sight.

“What would one do in a completely unknown place, without a place to live and without knowing what to do?” she added, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

It was not immediately clear what a new U.S. court ruling, saying the U.S. likely broke the law by deporting a fellow Colombian to Congo, will mean for her.

A United Nations-affiliated group plays a central role

In her interview from the hotel in Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, where she and other deportees are held, the woman gave new details about the central role that a United Nations-affiliated body, the International Organization for Migration, is playing.

She said deportees are allowed to leave the hotel about once a week and only accompanied by IOM staff. When they shop at a supermarket or withdraw money they are quickly ushered back to their vehicle, with IOM staff never out of sight.

“They choose where we go and what we buy,” she said.

At the hotel, she said, IOM staff have organized activities like painting, music and volleyball but many deportees have stopped participating, bored with the routine. She goes for meals and remains in her room otherwise, making late-night calls to her 10-year-old daughter in Colombia and worrying when she will see her again.

Most striking is the role IOM staff are playing in presenting deportees with their possible fates.

They have offered the woman two paths: Return to Colombia, where a U.S. judge has ruled she cannot safely be sent back, while receiving IOM “protection and assistance,” or remain in Congo with no support.

“They are given impossible choices,” said Alma David, the woman’s U.S.-based attorney. “By deporting them to a third country with no opportunity to contest being sent there, the U.S. not only violated their due process rights but our own immigration laws and our obligations under international treaties.”

Congo is one of at least eight African countries that have made deals with the Trump administration to facilitate deportations of third-country nationals, which legal experts say are effectively a legal loophole for the U.S. Most deportees had received legal orders of protection from U.S. judges shielding them against being returned to their home countries, lawyers said.

The AP has interviewed others sent to African nations who were forced to make risky decisions, such as a gay Moroccan asylum-seeker deported to Cameroon, a country where homosexuality is illegal.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the Colombian woman’s case, but it has asserted that third-country deportation agreements “ensure due process under the U.S. Constitution.” The Trump administration says the agreements are needed to “remove criminal illegal aliens” whose country of origin will not take them back.

Details of Congo’s deal with U.S. are unclear

The details of Congo’s deal with the Trump administration are not clear. Other countries have received millions of dollars to participate.

Earlier this month, Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi called the agreement an “act of goodwill between partners,” with no financial compensation. It comes as Washington has ramped up pressure on neighboring Rwanda over its support for the M23 rebel group that has seized cities in eastern Congo — a dynamic some analysts say may explain Kinshasa’s willingness to take deportees.

“We agreed to do so as a friendly gesture, simply because it was what the Americans wanted,” Tshisekedi said, adding that the migrants are free to leave Congo at any time.

“We understand that psychologically they must be unsettled because, at first, they dreamed of living the American dream, and now they are living the Congolese dream — in a country they probably did not know and may never even have noticed on a map of the world,” Tshisekedi said.

Congolese human rights groups have called it a violation of international refugee law. The Congo-based Institute for Human Rights Research described the situation as “arbitrary detention by proxy for the United States.”

The current U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy says if a government has made blanket diplomatic assurances that it won’t persecute people who are deported, no further process is required for deportation, not even giving deportees notice where they are being sent, said David, the attorney.

“When they told me they were going to deport me, I almost fainted,” the Colombian woman said. She was told about Congo the day before the flight.

She was detained at a routine check-in with ICE

She said she left Colombia in 2024, following threats from armed groups and abuse by a former partner who worked for the government.

She went to Mexico, where she waited for a border appointment booked with the U.S. government. When she presented herself at an Arizona port of entry in September 2024, immigration officials determined she had a credible fear of persecution, clearing her to apply for asylum, but kept her in ICE detention.

“You spend a year and a half locked up, living the same day over and over again. You see fights, punishments where people are locked in cells for many hours. You lose your privacy even to use the bathroom,” she said.

Some officers made racist remarks. “They made derogatory comments toward us as migrants, shouted at us all the time and sometimes denied basic things like showers as punishment,” she said.

In May 2025, a federal judge granted her protection under the U.N. Convention Against Torture, ruling she could not be safely returned to Colombia, according to court documents seen by the AP.

She filed a habeas corpus petition and won her release in February. She moved to Texas and was required to wear a GPS monitoring device, but at her first check-in appointment with ICE, she was detained again.

“All they told me was that I was under detention, as they had found a third country for me,” she said.

Less than three weeks later, she was put on a plane to Congo. She and the other deportees arrived on April 17 after a nearly 24-hour charter flight during which their hands and feet were restrained.

She doesn’t feel safe in Congo

Now they stay at a hotel near Kinshasa’s airport, in tidy white bungalows. Congo’s government covers the cost, the IOM said. It was not clear whether that would last after the deportees’ visas run out.

The hotel gates are locked according to one of the deportees lawyers. The Colombian woman also said security personnel do not let them leave on their own.

They were told they could apply for asylum, an option no one has chosen. “I don’t feel safe in Congo,” the woman said.

An IOM spokesperson said the organization has provided her with humanitarian assistance based on an assessment of her vulnerability. It includes “protection interventions, referrals, rights safeguarding and promotion of migrants’ overall well-being,” with no details.

The IOM also may offer “assisted voluntary return” — covering documents, flights, transit and temporary housing on arrival — with migrants’ consent.

The IOM said it plays no role in determining who is deported and reserves the right to withdraw its assistance for deportees if “minimum protection standards” aren’t met.

The Colombian woman remains in limbo, anxious. She said the food “has made us very sick,” with stomach ailments ongoing.

Local languages, like French and Lingala, are as foreign as her surroundings.

“The worst part is having to go through all of that without having committed any crime, simply for going to another country to ask for safety and protection.”

Banchereau writes for the Associated Press.

Several women sexually violated in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have come forward to report the war crimes committed against them by the M23 rebels amid the ongoing war in the country. The women spoke to Human Rights Watch researchers, but asked to be kept anonymous out of fear of retribution from the predators. 

The international organisation documented it in a report the atrocities committed by the rebels and Rwandan soldiers against the Congolese women. The report, published on May 13,  revealed how the duo summarily executed men and raped women during raids on civilian communities. Victims described being raped under threat of death and at gunpoint in their homes or in fields while searching for food, according to the HRW report. The attackers assaulted or killed relatives who attempted to stop them from sexually violating women. The absence of operational healthcare services in Uvira during the violent operations deprived survivors of crucial medical attention, including access to post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) to prevent HIV infection.

A woman who was allegedly raped by a combination of the M23 rebels and Rwanda soldiers in Uvira told  HRW researchers about the hell she was put through by the invaders in Uvira. 

“They stripped me completely naked, tied my hands behind my back with my clothes and then raped me. They continued doing so for a long time, and when my husband tried to intervene, they took him outside our house and shot him dead, ” the woman whose identity is being withheld in order to maintain her dignity told HRW.

The woman eventually lost consciousness and later consulted a health professional, receiving analgesics and a post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) kit. She says she still suffers from a persistent infection. The woman is one of eight individuals identified in the recent HRW report. 

According to the report, survivors of the atrocities identified their torturers as M23 combatants and soldiers of the Rwandan army, notably because they spoke the Kinyarwanda language and wore uniforms of the Rwandan army. They also carried military hardware which could easily be recognised and linked to the Rwandan army. 

Another woman cited in the report revealed how she was sexually violated on the same day, while she was working on her farm in Katala, situated in Uvira territory. She said two fighters approached her, one of them pointed a gun at her and declared in Kinyarwanda: “If you don’t do what I tell you, I will kill you”. The men, whom she identified through their Rwandan army uniforms, then went ahead to rape her. She eventually went to the Kavimvira health centre in Uvira for treatment, but she received no medical attention.

A third woman revealed that she was also sexually assaulted in December when she went to search for food, as provisions have been dwindling since the arrival of the M23 rebels in the zone. She said a Congolese and a Rwandan assaulted her sexually.

“The Rwandan man said he wanted to kill me, but the Congolese said ‘no, rape her’,” the woman revealed. She said after having been raped, she was afraid to go to a hospital for treatment and rather opted to go buy drugs from a pharmacy which only sold antibiotics to her. She stated that she continues to experience pain and has ongoing bleeding, but she has been unable to undergo medical tests, including an HIV test. 

Another woman told HRW that she was sexually assaulted on January 3, 2026, while she was on her farm on the periphery of Uvira. She said an M23 combatant and a Rwandan soldier who were pretending to be searching for water accosted her, and one of them ordered, “If you shout, we will kill you”, adding that they had not been with a woman for over six months, during which time they were in the bush. Since the rape incident, she has been bleeding and sick.

The woman revealed that during the occupation of Uvira by the M23 rebels, hospitals were not providing treatment for sexual violence, so she did not benefit from the medical kit necessary within 72 hours following sexual violence.

“In all the accounts rendered, the survivors underlined the almost total absence of accessible health services during the M23 and Rwandan occupation, and in particular, the absence of post-rape treatment at the appropriate time, as well as adequate treatment for wounds and infections provoked by sexual violence. Other essential services, including psycho-social support, the collection of proofs and judicial assistance were also not available”, the HRW report reveals.

The United Nations Population Fund, on its part, notes that sexual violence committed by the belligerent parties in the Eastern DR Congo has increased, with more than 80,000 cases of rape reported between January and September 2025, which is a 32 per cent increase compared to the same period in 2024.

The sudden and chaotic cuts in international aid introduced by the American government at the beginning of 2025 abruptly halted emergency medical treatment and various forms of support for thousands of survivors of sexual violence.

The survivors have been confronted by a bigger risk of contracting HIV or unplanned pregnancies because the clinics and hospitals in the Eastern DR Congo no longer have stocks of post-exposure prophylactic (PEP) kits, which were hitherto mostly supplied by projects financed by the United States. These kits are supposed to be administered 72 hours after exposure in order to prevent infections like HIV.

The strategic town of Uvira has, since the M23/AFC rebels occupied Bukavu at the beginning of December 2025, become the provisional capital of South Kivu province despite the signing of the Washington Accords by Felix Tshisekedi and Paul Kagame in the presence of Donald Trump. Supported by Rwanda, the M23/AFC rebels launched a rapid offensive, resulting in the capture of the town.

May 15 (UPI) — The Democratic Republic of Congo declared an Ebola outbreak on Friday as 65 people have died from the disease in the country’s eastern region.

There have been about 246 cases reported, many of them in the Ituri province’s small mining towns of Mongbwalu and Rwampara. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement Friday that it is meeting with DRC, Ugandan and South Sudanese leaders to prepare a response to the outbreak.

Uganda and South Sudan border the Ituri province.

Africa CDC said that the DRC’s national research laboratory has detected Ebola in 13 of 20 samples it has tested.

There have been 16 prior Ebola outbreaks in the DRC since 1976 when it first identified the virus within its borders. Vaccines are available for the Zaire strain. Africa CDC said that early testing indicates the current strain is not the Zaire strain.

“Africa CDC stands in solidarity with the government and people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as they respond to this outbreak,” Dr. Jean Kaseya, director general of Africa CDC, said in a statement. “Given the high population movement between affected areas and neighboring countries, rapid regional coordination is essential.”

The mining towns where the outbreak is centered experience a lot of inbound and outbound traffic, raising concerns about the disease spreading further.

Ebola is a severe illness with a high fatality rate in humans, reaching as high as 90% in some cases, the World Health Organization says.

Infection can be spread by direct contact with a person who is infected or object surfaces that are contaminated with bodily fluids from a person who is sick or has died from the disease.

The Ebola virus can incubate between two and 21 days. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, malaise, muscle pain, headache and sore throat, before progressing to vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, rash and symptoms related to impaired kidney and liver functions.

There were 64 cases of Ebola reported in the DRC last year, with 45 deaths, a 70% rate of fatality, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That outbreak occurred from September to December in the remote Bulape health zone in the Kasai province, which has a relatively low population density.

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to bring a Colombian woman back to the U.S. from Congo, after she was deported to the African nation that had refused to accept her.

The deportation of Adriana Maria Quiroz Zapata “was likely illegal,” U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon ruled Wednesday.

Zapata, 55, who has diabetes and a thyroid condition, “has been sent to a country that refused to accept her because they cannot provide sufficient medical care,” the ruling said. “As a result, she faces a daily risk of medical complications, up to and including death.”

Black spots began to grow on Zapata’s back and foot while she was in detention, her skin started to peel and her nails blackened, according to a declaration that Zapata submitted in court, and which was provided to the AP by her lawyer.

“She’s not doing well and does worry that she’s going to die,” her lawyer, Lauren O’Neal, said.

Zapata entered the U.S. from Mexico in August 2024 and was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. Since being deported, she has lived in a hotel in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital. The hotel gates are locked, O’Neal said. Zapata and other deportees are rarely allowed out, and only with supervision, she said.

Zapata was among thousands of immigrants living legally in the U.S., waiting for rulings on asylum claims, when they were suddenly issued deportation decrees that ordered them expelled to countries where most had no connections.

More than 15,000 third-country deportation orders were issued in the White House push for ever more immigrant expulsions, advocacy groups say, though only a fraction of the orders have been carried out.

Few details are known about the agreements to accept these deportees, though the U.S. has signed them with a range of countries, including Ecuador, Honduras, Uganda, Cameroon and Congo. Advocacy groups estimate only a couple of hundred third-country deportations, at most, have been carried out.

Galofaro writes for the Associated Press.

The security landscape along the border between the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan is deteriorating amid a series of alarming attacks attributed to armed men believed to be South Sudanese soldiers. The Kakwa chiefdom, particularly the Roumou tribal group and the village of Agoroba in Aru territory, Ituri province, has been severely affected by these incursions. 

Local sources said the suspected South Sudanese soldiers looted cattle and money, and abducted Congolese civilians.

“These armed men coming from South Sudan have looted from the population, taking away cows, goats, money, and even abducting young men, whom they continue to hold in the bushes. This situation does not date today. It has been several months since these armed men have been crossing the border to attack our villages,” a local chief told HumAngle.

Dieudonne Tabani, a national parliamentarian,  has raised concerns about the worsening security situation along the border between the DRC and South Sudan in the Aru territory of Ituri province. He condemned how the repeated incursions in several localities of Kakwa chiefdom are characterised by the looting of belongings as well as the abduction of civilians.

“The number of our soldiers along the border with South Sudan is very minimal. When these armed men enter, they are not faced by a rigorous response. We call on the provincial authorities, under the state of siege, to urgently reinforce the military presence in the zone,” a local in the Ituri province told HumAngle. “The central government must also get involved in diplomatic overtures with a view to clearly demarcating the boundary, most times given as a reason for the incursions into our territory.”

Amid this troubling situation, Ituri provincial authorities have called on the population to remain calm, assuring that the authorities in Kinshasa have already been briefed and that measures will eventually be taken to secure the zone.

In January, DRC and South Sudan completed a major prisoner exchange following a diplomatic meeting. The border town of the Aru territory in the DRC serves as a haven for numerous South Sudanese refugees escaping the civil conflict in their homeland.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is in discussions to potentially send more than 1,000 Afghans who assisted America’s war effort and relatives of U.S. service members stuck in Qatar to a third country, the U.S. government and some advocates said. Congo is an option, the advocates said.

Shawn VanDiver, a Navy veteran who heads a coalition that supports Afghan resettlement efforts called #AfghanEvac, said Wednesday that U.S. officials informed him and other groups of discussions between the United States and Congo about taking the Afghan refugees who have been in limbo at a U.S. base in Doha for the last year.

The 1,100 refugees at Camp As-Sayliyah include Afghans who served as interpreters and with Special Operations Forces as well as the immediate families of more than 150 active-duty U.S. military members.

The State Department said Wednesday that it is working to identify options to “voluntarily” resettle the refugees in a third country, but it did not confirm which nations were being discussed.

An alternative provided to the refugees, VanDiver said, is to return to Afghanistan, where they face likely reprisal or even death at the hands of the Taliban for working alongside the U.S. during the two-decade war.

“You cannot call a choice voluntary when the two options are Congo and the Taliban, civil war or an oppressor who wants to kill you,” VanDiver said at a virtual news conference. “That is not a choice. That is a confession extracted under duress.”

The discussions — which were reported earlier by the New York Times — come more than a year after President Trump paused his predecessor’s Afghan resettlement program as part of a series of executive orders cracking down on immigration.

That policy left thousands of refugees who fled war and persecution, and had gone through a sometimes years-long vetting process to start new lives in America, stranded at places worldwide, including the base in Qatar.

From one war-torn country to another

Negotiations between the U.S. and several other countries, including Botswana and Malaysia, started months ago, according to an executive at a refugee resettlement agency who was briefed by U.S. officials. The executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity to share private negotiations, said that Botswana was seen by many refugee advocates as the most promising option but that talks between senior U.S. officials and the country’s leadership fell through. In early April, the executive was briefed that Congo was now the main option being discussed.

A person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity said they had heard from State Department personnel that the U.S. was looking at sending the Afghans at the base in Qatar to countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The person said the Afghans were told Wednesday that there was no final deal on where to send them.

The base in Doha “was always intended as a transit platform. It was never designed to hold families for months or years, which is the situation that people are currently in,” said Jon Finer, who was deputy national security advisor to then-President Biden. “What I want to emphasize is that this was intended to honor a wartime commitment.”

Finer and other former U.S. officials and refugee advocates warned of the risk of resettling Afghans in Congo, a country that U.N. officials say is facing “one of the most acute humanitarian emergencies in the world.”

The African country has been battered by decades-long fighting between government forces and Rwanda-backed rebels in its eastern region.

Congolese authorities did not immediately respond to AP’s request for comment on the discussions, which did not come as a surprise to some there. Congo is one of at least eight African nations that were paid millions in controversial deals with the Trump administration to receive migrants deported from the U.S. to countries other than their own.

Like most other African nations involved in the deportation program, Congo is also among the worst-hit by the Trump administration’s policies on aid and trade. At least 70% of the country’s humanitarian aid came from the U.S. before Trump’s second term, and aid workers say American aid cuts have led to avoidable deaths in the conflict-hit region.

Sean Jamshidi — an Afghan American who served in the U.S. military, including a stint in Congo — said he was deeply concerned about his brother possibly being sent from the Doha base to the war-torn country.

“I saw the security situation and what it looked like there. I saw the displacement camps. … I stood in places where the United Nations has counted the dead,” Jamshidi said. “I’m telling you, as someone who has been in uniform, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is not a place you send vetted Afghan allies and their children to live.”

Refugees are in the dark as they await their fate

Negina Khalili, a former prosecutor in Afghanistan who fled during the 2021 U.S. withdrawal, has been waiting to hear about the resettlement status of her father, brother and stepmother since they arrived at the Doha base in January 2025. That was just days before Trump suspended the refugee program soon after he returned to the White House.

Khalili told the Associated Press on Wednesday that she spoke to her family about reports that they could be sent to Congo.

“They are not giving them any information or updates regarding which countries they will go to,” she said. “They were so stressed and worried about it and said that Congo is not a safe place either. They don’t know if it’s a temporary location for them there or a permanent location. They are worried.”

She said U.S. officials at the camp have been suggesting to refugees that they go back to Afghanistan and offering them money to do so.

Amiri, Santana and Asadu write for the Associated Press. Amiri reported from New York and Asadu from Abuja, Nigeria. AP writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

KINSHASA, Congo — Around 15 people deported from the United States landed in Congo’s capital Kinshasa early Friday, one of their lawyers told the Associated Press.

It was the latest example of the Trump administration using agreements with African countries to accelerate migrant removals that have raised questions about respect for the migrants’ rights.

An official at the Congolese migration agency confirmed the arrivals but didn’t provide details.

The deportees are all from Latin America and the Congolese government plans to keep them in the country for a short period, said U.S. attorney Alma David, who represents one of the deportees. She has been speaking with her client since arriving in Kinshasa.

All the deportees are believed to have legal protection from U.S. judges shielding them against being returned to their home countries, David said. The deportees are believed to be staying at a hotel in Kinshasa.

The International Organization for Migration, a United Nations-affiliated agency, will be involved to offer “assisted voluntary return,” David told AP.

“The fact that the focus is on offering them ‘voluntary’ return to their home country when they spent months in immigration detention in the U.S. fighting hard to not have to go home is very alarming,” she said.

An International Organization for Migration spokesperson said the organization was providing humanitarian assistance to the deportees at the request of the Congolese government. It said it may also offer assisted voluntary return, which is “strictly voluntary and based on free, prior and informed consent.”

Congo’s Ministry of Communications said in a statement earlier this month that it will receive some migrants as part of a new deal under the Trump administration’s third-country program.

It described the arrangement as a “temporary” one that reflects Congo’s “commitment to human dignity and international solidarity.” It would come with zero costs to the government with the U.S. covering the needed logistics, it said.

The statement said no automatic transfer of the deportees is planned, adding: “Each situation will be subject to individual review in accordance with the laws of the Republic and national security requirements.”

The U.S. has struck such third-country deportation deals with at least seven other African nations, many of them among countries hit hardest by the Trump administration’s policies restricting trade, aid and migration.

The Trump administration has spent at least $40 million to deport about 300 migrants to countries other than their own, according to a report released recently by the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Lawyers and activists have raised questions over the nature of the deals with countries in Africa and elsewhere. Several of the African nations that have signed such deals have notoriously repressive governments and poor human rights records — including Eswatini, South Sudan and Equatorial Guinea.

Kamale and Banchereau write for the Associated Press. Banchereau reported from Dakar, Senegal. AP writer Saleh Mwanamilongo in Bonn, Germany contributed to this report.