Sierra Leone on Wednesday, May 20, became the latest African country to receive migrants expelled from the United States under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
A first plane carrying nine west African migrants landed on Wednesday morning at the international airport just outside Freetown, an AFP journalist saw.
“We have received nine deportees this morning from the US,” Foreign Minister Timothy Musa Kabba told AFP, after initially saying 25 migrants would arrive.
The deportees are from Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea and Senegal, according to authorities.
Police, medics and government officials were on hand to receive them at the airport, an AFP journalist reported.
Seven men and two women, heads bowed, were seen boarding a minibus outside the airport under police escort.
“All were “traumatised due to the months in chains during detention in the US,” said Doris Bah, a health ministry official at the scene. Most of them, she told AFP, wanted to return to their home countries.
“Some of the deportees were arrested on the streets and their place of work while another was arrested while playing football in the US,” Bah said.
They will be housed in a hotel and are expected to return to their countries within two weeks at the latest, she added.
The authorities in Freetown have agreed to accept up to 300 people a year expelled by the United States — but only from the member states of the west African economic bloc ECOWAS.
“We are taking in these deported people because they are from west Africa, and some of them hold Sierra Leonean residence permits obtained many years ago,” Foreign Minister Timothy Musa Kabba told AFP by telephone late Tuesday.
They “have the right to stay in the country for 90 days and can then return to their country of origin”, he added.
The United States is providing $1.5 million to support the programme “to cover the humanitarian and operational costs linked to this agreement”, according to a foreign ministry document consulted by AFP.
Freetown has not said whether other concessions were agreed.
Asked about deportations to Sierra Leone, a US State Department spokesperson said on Wednesday that removing migrants from US territory was a “top priority”, without explaining why the west African country had been selected or what incentives were offered.
Sierra Leone is just the latest African country to have taken in people deported from the United States, following Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Ghana, Rwanda and South Sudan.
In return, Washington provides financial and logistical support.
Some countries, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, have taken in migrants from other continents, including Latin America.
Human Rights Watch, urging African nations to reject the arrangements, argued in September that the “opaque deals” were “part of a US policy approach that violated international human rights law.”