Machine of Cruelty
The arbitrary deportation of Latin American migrants from the U.S. to Africa is an example of a path no democracy should ever follow
When Donald Trump returned to power in 2025 and the White House announced the ‘'largest domestic deportation operation in American history,”* a cruel machine was set in motion. In less than two years, indiscriminate mass detentions have destroyed families and futures in neighborhoods throughout the country. The most visible face of this official xenophobia has been the show of violence on the part of the migrant police, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE was originally a small corps of law enforcement agents that was transformed by the U.S. president into a force dedicated to the relentless pursuit, and arbitrary and brutal persecution, of immigrants. The hidden face is what happens after these detentions. Obsession with instilling fear has led the U.S. administration to operate on the margins of the law to avoid the constitutional guarantees that are there to help everyone, including the undocumented.
Thousands of these people have been deported, not to their country of origin, but to third countries thousands of miles from their home in the U.S. This is without criminal charges, without any explanation and without any means of returning. This has been documented by El Pais with the testimonies of a dozen Latin Americans trapped in Africa in these circumstances. According to them, one day they were detained by ICE in the streets of the city where they lived. Then they were then locked up in a detention center and then forced onto a plane. When they came down the airplane steps, they were in Liberia or Eswatini (Swaziland) or in any one of the 14 African countries that have signed opaque bilateral agreements with the U.S., which agree to take these people in exchange for money.
All of this has led, via political fait accompli, to a legal limbo that is difficult to resolve. In some countries, the migrants are in prison; in others, in hotels, but under guard. They live off the money that their families send them. They have no documentation. The U.S. washes its hands of them and says that its responsibility for them ended when they were removed by force from U.S. territory. They are not accused of anything and have no legal status in the country that has taken them in. They are neither immigrants nor tourists. They cannot return to the countries from which they emigrated in the first place in search of a better life in the U.S. because these countries either are not safe or will not allow them to come back. “This is called human trafficking,” says a Cuban man who was deported to the Central African Republic. This is no exaggeration.
According to the organization Third Country Deportation Watch, 23,000 people have been sent to 35 countries so far. It is a tiny figure in comparison with the 14 million undocumented people estimated to live in the U.S., but enormous if you think of the tragedy that is each individual case. It establishes an unacceptable and unregulated precedent that nobody should want to imitate because the entitlement of any human being to have rights is inalienable. The testimonies of victims of these expulsions should serve as a warning to Europe about outsourcing migration policy. Sending asylum seekers to detention centers in other continents could risk heading in an appalling direction. With this legal limbo in Africa, the Trump administration is setting an example of a path down which no democracy should ever go.
*Editor’s note: This quote, though accurately translated, could not be independently verified.
When Donald Trump returned to power in 2025 and the White House announced the ‘'largest domestic deportation operation in American history,”* a cruel machine was set in motion. In less than two years, indiscriminate mass detentions have destroyed families and futures in neighborhoods throughout the country. The most visible face of this official xenophobia has been the show of violence on the part of the migrant police, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE was originally a small corps of law enforcement agents that was transformed by the U.S. president into a force dedicated to the relentless pursuit, and arbitrary and brutal persecution, of immigrants. The hidden face is what happens after these detentions. Obsession with instilling fear has led the U.S. administration to operate on the margins of the law to avoid the constitutional guarantees that are there to help everyone, including the undocumented.
Thousands of these people have been deported, not to their country of origin, but to third countries thousands of miles from their home in the U.S. This is without criminal charges, without any explanation and without any means of returning. This has been documented by El Pais with the testimonies of a dozen Latin Americans trapped in Africa in these circumstances. According to them, one day they were detained by ICE in the streets of the city where they lived. Then they were then locked up in a detention center and then forced onto a plane. When they came down the airplane steps, they were in Liberia or Eswatini (Swaziland) or in any one of the 14 African countries that have signed opaque bilateral agreements with the U.S., which agree to take these people in exchange for money.
All of this has led, via political fait accompli, to a legal limbo that is difficult to resolve. In some countries, the migrants are in prison; in others, in hotels, but under guard. They live off the money that their families send them. They have no documentation. The U.S. washes its hands of them and says that its responsibility for them ended when they were removed by force from U.S. territory. They are not accused of anything and have no legal status in the country that has taken them in. They are neither immigrants nor tourists. They cannot return to the countries from which they emigrated in the first place in search of a better life in the U.S. because these countries either are not safe or will not allow them to come back. “This is called human trafficking,” says a Cuban man who was deported to the Central African Republic. This is no exaggeration.
According to the organization Third Country Deportation Watch, 23,000 people have been sent to 35 countries so far. It is a tiny figure in comparison with the 14 million undocumented people estimated to live in the U.S., but enormous if you think of the tragedy that is each individual case. It establishes an unacceptable and unregulated precedent that nobody should want to imitate because the entitlement of any human being to have rights is inalienable. The testimonies of victims of these expulsions should serve as a warning to Europe about outsourcing migration policy. Sending asylum seekers to detention centers in other continents could risk heading in an appalling direction. With this legal limbo in Africa, the Trump administration is setting an example of a path down which no democracy should ever go.
*Editor’s note: This quote, though accurately translated, could not be independently verified.
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