Immigrants looking out the windows of a plane after arriving in Costa Rica on a deportation flight from the United States in February. Costa Rica took 200 deportees in February, including citizens of China, India and Nepal. Credit: Reuters
Summary:
- Liberia included on a proposed list of countries that the U.S. has asked or intends to ask to accept expelled individuals who are not citizens of that country, including criminals.
- A Liberian Foreign Ministry spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, but the Foreign Minister previously said they were “engaging the U.S. on the issues.”
- U.S. announces withdrawal of financial support for Gavi, which provides vaccines for the world’s poorest children.
By Anthony Stephens, senior correspondent with New Narratives
Liberia has been included on a proposed list of 51 countries that have been identified by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to accept deportees, including criminals, who are not their own citizens, according to the New York Times, a U.S. media outlet.
The effort is part of a broader push by President Trump’s administration to persuade foreign governments to take in third party nationals being deported from the United States. American officials are appealing to countries across the globe—including some with histories of conflict or human rights concerns.
The Times named Angola, Mongolia, and Ukraine, which is currently under invasion by Russia, along with key U.S. allies such as Ghana, Nigeria, Egypt, Djibouti and war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo in addition to Liberia. Critics say Liberia’s struggling economy is unable to provide services for its own citizens let alone absorbing more.
During the 2024 election campaign Trump vowed to conduct what he called the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history”, with plans that include mass deportation of millions of undocumented immigrants.
So far, seven countries—Rwanda, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Kosovo, Mexico and Panama – have accepted the offer according to the Times. Kosovo has agreed to take in up to 50 deportees, while Costa Rica is already holding dozens.
In one case, the U.S. reportedly paid Rwanda $100,000 to accept a single Iraqi national and is now in talks to send additional deportees there. Peru, on the other hand, has declined multiple U.S. requests to participate. Angola and Burkina Faso have also refused to take deportees according to the Times.
Trump and his team have framed the initiative as a crackdown on crime and a means to halt what they describe as an “invasion” at the border. But they have not provided evidence that most individuals targeted for deportation have committed any crimes.
During a cabinet meeting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the strategy. “We are working with other countries to say, ‘We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries, and will you do that as a favor to us?’ And the farther away from America the better, so they can’t come back across the border.”
Critics of the deportations and lawyers say court hearings are needed to determine whether the law allows for the expulsion of each individual. And they argue the administration is ignoring the potential for human rights abuses in some of the countries willing to play host.
Administration officials have been clear that the goal of the policy is to frighten undocumented immigrants into self-deporting. They are sending the message that people risk ending up in brutal conditions in a faraway land if they don’t leave voluntarily.
Plans were recently underway by the administration to deport individuals—primarily from Asian and Latin American nations—to conflict-ridden countries such as Libya and South Sudan. However, those plans were halted after a U.S. district court issued a ruling blocking the transfers. Libya, notably, was one of nine nations identified in a diplomatic cable that had not been previously disclosed.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the administration’s authority to remove noncitizens to third countries, potentially clearing the path for renewed deportation efforts to South Sudan and similar destinations.
“Time to get the deportation planes ready,” wrote Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin in a social media post.
Raymond Stephens, public affairs officer at the U.S. embassy in Monrovia, told FrontPage Africa/New Narratives in a WhatsApp message, “We do not comment on our bilateral discussions with host country governments.”
Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, a refugee resettlement agency, told the paper the hundreds of expulsions were “another nail in the coffin of America’s role as a defender of human rights.”
“Imagine getting deported to a country where you have no family ties, where you don’t know the language or the culture, to which you have never even been, and with an atrocious human rights record,” Hetfield said. “Imagine that this happens when you may not be able to access a lawyer to represent you prior to being deported to such a place. This is what the Trump administration is pursuing.”
Recently The Washington Post, another U.S. media outlet, quoted a cable that had Liberia on a list of 36 countries whose citizens could be banned from traveling to the U.S. One in every four Liberians who visited the country on visas overstayed, according to a 2023 report from the U.S. Homeland Security Department. Bans went into place this month for several countries including neighboring Sierra Leone.
The cable cited countries’ agreement to take third party nationals as one of the ways a country could avoid the ban.
A spokesman for Liberia’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. Last week Sara Beysolow Nyanti, Liberia’s Foreign Minister, admitted that she and other Liberian officials “are engaging on the issues of which we are informed that the Liberian overstay rate is one of the highest.” President Joseph Boakai set up a high-level task force, which he will chair.
Meanwhile in the latest blow to Liberia’s health system delivered by the Trump administration, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced America’s withdrawal of financial support from GAVI, the leading international vaccine organization, which supplies vaccines to poor children.
In confrontational remarks sent by video to global leaders who had gathered to support the organization, Kennedy accused the organization of having “ignored the science” in immunizing children around the world. He said the United States would not deliver on a $1.2 billion pledge made by the Biden administration until the organization changed its processes.
“When vaccine safety issues have come before Gavi, Gavi has treated them not as a patient health problem, but as a public relations problem,” Kennedy said in the address. He offered no evidence for the allegation.
In a statement, Gavi’s leaders rejected the suggestion that its vaccine purchases were driven by anything other than the best available evidence.
“Any decision made by Gavi with regards to its vaccine portfolio is made in alignment with recommendations by the World Health Organization’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE), a group of independent experts that reviews all available data through a rigorous, transparent and independent process,” Gavi’s statement said.
Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon who led global health work in the Biden administration, told the Times Kennedy’s remarks were “stunning and calamitous.”
“This establishes an official U.S. position against childhood vaccination and its support,” he said. “In the face of demonstration that vaccines are the single most lifesaving technology for children, over half a century, he is asserting a position that the U.S. will not support vaccination. This is utterly disastrous for children around the world and for public health.”
This story was a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the Investigating Liberia project. Funding was provided by the Swedish embassy in Liberia which had no say in the story’s content.
