The Trump administration has been flying migrants with no ties to the Central African Republic (CAR) into the country as part of a rapidly expanding “third-country deportation” program, sending people from Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, Cuba, and elsewhere to a nation where armed rebel groups control entire provinces. On June 12, a flight carrying 17 people, including Turkish, Afghan, and Iranian nationals, landed in the capital, Bangui.
Third-country deportation lets the government remove someone to a country that isn’t their own and isn’t the one they’re fleeing, as long as that third country agrees to take them. The US has now signed these agreements with more than 30 countries. Unlike deportation to a person’s home country, there’s no requirement that the receiving country have any connection to the deportee at all.
Who’s Being Sent, and Why It’s Controversial
Among those slated for CAR flights are two Iranian women who had already secured “withholding of removal” from a US immigration judge, a legal protection specifically meant to prevent someone from being sent somewhere they’d face torture or persecution. Their attorney says that protection doesn’t cover being sent to a third country instead, a legal gap human rights groups argue is being used to route around court orders altogether. CBS News has reported migrants describing being effectively stranded once they arrive, unable to leave and without a path to legal status in a country in active conflict.
What Happens to People Once They Arrive?
The Central African Republic has no meaningful capacity to absorb deportees who don’t speak local languages, have no family or community ties, and often can’t safely travel within the country given ongoing fighting between the government and armed rebel factions. Rights groups including Amnesty International have called on African nations broadly to refuse these arrangements, arguing that accepting cash or diplomatic incentives to take deportees amounts to complicity in placing vulnerable people in danger.
