Published August 20, 2026
The first group of deportees, expected to total 1,200 people, arrived from the United States at Roberts International Airport in Monrovia, Liberia.
Thursday’s flight is part of a growing trend of third-country deportations under U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, in which foreign nationals are sent to countries other than their own.
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The first flight carried 20 people, mostly from Latin American countries such as Venezuela and Cuba.
After landing, the group boarded a bus and were taken away by Liberian authorities without being allowed to speak to reporters.
The flight follows an agreement announced Tuesday between the United States and Liberia to transport up to 1,200 deportees to the African country over the next year.
Liberia is part of the list of countries that have signed agreements with the Trump administration.
Since Trump took office for his second term as U.S. president in 2025, he has signed agreements with at least 35 countries to accept deportees from third countries, according to the nonprofit Human Rights First.
In return, some of these countries receive financial aid and trade agreements. Senate Democrats estimated in February that at least $40 million was spent on such deals in the first year of President Trump’s second term.
For example, the United States awarded Liberia $5 million this year for “immigration control activities.”
However, when announcing the transfer agreement earlier this week, Liberia’s Ministry of Information denied reports that he had agreed to be deported for financial reasons.
“The transfer of personnel to Liberia is not a quid pro quo transaction,” the ministry said in a statement. “Liberia has not requested or received any promise of compensation or remuneration in exchange for agreeing to participate in the program.”
Liberia’s Information Minister Jerolyn Mek Peer also told Reuters that the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations Refugee Agency would help provide services to the deportees.
Tuesday’s statement said those brought to Liberia will have their asylum claims accepted and are “free to leave the country whenever they wish.”
Liberia said the deportees “are not criminals and have not been prosecuted in any way.”
“Liberia, the continent’s first independent black African state, has a long history of hosting people seeking refuge from political and other crises,” the ministry said in a statement.
“In fact, Liberia itself was founded as a haven for freed slaves from the United States and other parts of the world.”
But critics have questioned whether small countries in Africa and elsewhere are being used as “dumping grounds” for U.S. deportees, and whether migrants forced abroad have sufficient access to the resources they need.
Some characterize such deportations to third countries as overly punitive, leaving migrants and asylum seekers stranded in places they sometimes do not speak the language of.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration argues that third-party deportations are necessary for immigrants whose home countries won’t accept them. Furthermore, this exclusion is positioned as a form of deterrence.
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo estimated Thursday that this year alone, about 2,300 Mexicans have been deported from the United States to their home country rather than being sent directly to Mexico.
CBS News and other media reported that the operation was part of an effort to prevent Mexicans from returning to the United States without legal immigration status.
However, Arevalo explained that such deportees will be promptly returned to Mexico. “They arrived on a Guatemalan return flight and what we did was work with Mexican immigration authorities to process them as transiting,” he said.
