Migrants deported by US to Sierra Leone risk return to countries where they fear persecution

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Asylum seekers deported by the U.S. to Sierra Leone risk being sent back to their home countries where they face persecution, according to one of their lawyers and documents seen by The Associated Press, despite prior U.S. court orders barring their deportation to those countries.

About a dozen people deported from the U.S. arrived in Sierra Leone Thursday, the second deportation flight to the country after nine West African migrants landed there last month, Erica Reilly, an attorney representing one of the migrants, said Friday.

Sierra Leone is one of at least nine other African nations that the U.S. has struck third-country deportation deals with. Authorities have said they are only taking in citizens of West African countries. Several countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have also reached similar agreements with the U.S.

A briefing pamphlet that lawyers said was distributed to the migrants upon their arrival in the capital, Freetown, reads that the government and contractors are working to “return you home as quickly and safely as possible.”

The pamphlet, a copy of which was seen by the AP, was distributed by Kenvah Solutions, ⁠a private contractor that the Sierra Leone government said it hired to handle the deportees’ accommodation, food, healthcare and transfer.

The pamphlet describes Sierra Leone as a “temporary transit location,” stating that “no long-term settlement is provided for or permitted.”

Kenvah Solutions and the Sierra Leonean authorities did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Under a series of often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to nearly two dozen countries that are not their own, advocates say, all part of the broad U.S. crackdown on immigration. Immigration lawyers said the Trump administration uses deportations to third countries as a legal loophole to indirectly force asylum seekers back to their home countries.

Sierra Leone’s foreign minister, Timothy Kabba, said last month that the government’s agreement with the Trump administration is supported by a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. government.

The program is capped at 25 deportees per month and 300 per year, according to the ministry. It did not specify the duration of the arrangement.

Reilly, the attorney representing a Nigerian man among those deported Thursday, said the migrants had legal protections from U.S. courts to not be deported to their home countries after judges ruled they faced credible fears of persecution. Now they are left with little ability to prevent being sent there.

“They’re put in a position where they just don’t have a say at all,” Reilly said.

Earlier this month, rights lawyers filed a case against Equatorial Guinea before Africa’s top human rights body, accusing the central African nation of forcing deportees from the United States back to their home countries in violation of their rights.

“The U.S. government knows exactly what’s going to happen in the vast majority of these situations,” Reilly said. “Our government is just saying, ‘What happens to them after they leave the United States is not our problem.’”

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Banchereau reported from Dakar, Senegal.

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