US Flies 5 Deportees to Equatorial Guinea After Liberia Refusal
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Aug 21
US Flies 5 Deportees to Equatorial Guinea After Liberia Refusal
3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Aug 21
Summary
At least five deportees the United States had sent to Liberia were flown on to Equatorial Guinea on Thursday after they refused to get off the plane.
The transfer appears to be the first reported case in the administration’s third-country deportation campaign where migrants who resisted disembarking in one country with no ties were sent to another such country.
The group came from a Liberia deal under which Monrovia agreed to accept up to 1,200 US deportees over the next year; lawyers identified them as three Cubans, one Brazilian and one Cameroonian.
In Malabo, the deportees were taken in handcuffs to a remote hotel guarded by armed security, according to a lawyer, and their status remained unclear on Friday.
DHS said only that the migrants had been deported to a “safe third country” and that it was applying the law as written.