US Sends Migrants to Africa, Bypassing Human Rights Protections

The single sharpest fact in one or two punchy sentences. Who did what, where, when, and why it matters. Not a summary of everything — the one thing that makes someone stop scrolling. A 43-year-old Cambodian man named Pheap Rom was sent to a notorious prison in Eswatini, after being threatened with US visa bans.

The US is using visa bans and restrictions on African countries to strongarm them into taking people from third countries as part of Donald Trump's crackdown on immigration, two former State Department officials told AFP.

Lawyers say deportees have been thrown into a “legal black hole”, held without charge in countries where they have no ties and few if any rights.

Others were sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda; others still dropped off the radar after being sent to war-torn South Sudan.

The United States is using visa bans and restrictions on African countries to strongarm them into taking people from third countries, a move that human rights groups are criticizing as modern-day human trafficking.

Cambodian Pheap Rom, 43, ended up in a notorious high-security prison in tiny Eswatini, which is run with an iron fist by King Mswati III. “I didn’t understand why I was being expelled to Africa since I’m Cambodian,” he told AFP.

Pheap Rom's story highlights the plight of many migrants who are being deported to Africa under the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration, often with little to no protection from human rights abuses.

According to US Senators and NGOs, two-thirds of the 39 countries hit by the Trump administration’s full or partial travel bans are in Africa — as are nearly half of nations that have struck murky deportation deals with Washington.

The White House did not respond to the allegations, with the State Department only telling AFP that “implementing the Trump Administration’s immigration policies is a top priority.

Trump’s third-country deportations plan is the brainchild of his hardline anti-immigration adviser Stephen Miller and his Homeland Security Council, the ex-State Department officials said.

A 23-year-old East African man who said he had fled torture in his home country was deported to Equatorial Guinea without any documents and is now stuck in a Kafkaesque situation.

The government of Equatorial Guinea told him he couldn’t stay, and at the end of May he was put on a plane back to his home country. But border officials there turned him around because he didn’t have travel documents. He’s now back in Equatorial Guinea, unable to leave, and unable to request asylum, because it does not exist there, according to the UNHCR.

Many of the people shunted onto deportation flights in the middle of the night had legal protections under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) or other safeguards, according to testimonies collected by AFP over the past year.

They were only informed of their expulsion on board the plane, without knowing their destination. Handcuffed and unable to call their lawyers, some were beaten for resisting.

Unlike people with firmer rights, such as asylum, those with torture or “withholding of removal” protections still have an active deportation order hanging over them — though in the past this often allowed them to legally live and work in the United States.

The US has also been accused of ignoring the human rights situation in countries like Eswatini, which has a poor record of human rights abuses.

The government of Eswatini has agreed to take 160 deportees in exchange for a 7.5-million-aid deal for 250 people, according to Human Rights Watch.

The US is using a combination of visa bans and cash incentives to strong-arm countries like Eswatini into taking in migrants who are being deported from the US, a move that human rights groups are criticizing as modern-day human trafficking.

The deportations have been particularly harsh for migrants who have been granted protections under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) or other safeguards, who have been thrown into a “legal black hole” and are being held without charge in countries where they have no ties and few if any rights.

The situation highlights the need for greater transparency and accountability in the US deportation process, particularly when it comes to migrants who have been granted protections under international law.