Despite Court Protection Orders, Trump Admin Deports Refugees to War-Torn Central African Republic, Putting ‘Lives at Risk’
“It’s hard to fathom how deeply evil this is,” said Sen. Chris Murphy.
Central African Republic soldiers and Tanzanian peacekeepers of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) patrol during a joint operation near Carnot on May 25, 2026.
(Photo by Pacome PABANDJI / AFP via Getty Images)
Stephen Prager
Jun 12, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
The US government advises Americans not to travel to the Central African Republic “for any reason.” But it just deported nearly two dozen people to the war-torn country, including several refugees who fled persecution in other nations.
On Friday morning, Human Rights First’s deportation flight tracker reported that a plane used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had landed in Accra, Ghana, after departing from Louisiana the previous day and was believed to be en route to the CAR’s capital, Bangui.
Per The New York Times on Thursday, the administration was preparing to deport “at least two Iranian women who had sought refuge in the United States” as well as “migrants from Afghanistan and Syria.”
According to their lawyers, several of the migrants had received court orders from judges prohibiting their deportation to their home countries, citing the risk of persecution there.
A lawyer for one of the Iranian women told the Times that neither of them has a criminal record and that they both have been granted court protection due to fear of threats to their freedom or lives if they returned to Iran. One is a Christian convert, and the other is a pro-democracy activist.
According to Reuters, just the activist ended up on the flight from Louisiana. But the Christian woman is still at risk, along with another Iranian national.
The burden of proof to receive what is known as a “withholding of removal” status from an immigration judge is even higher than that needed for migrants to qualify for asylum.
Those seeking their deportations to be halted must demonstrate that it’s more likely than not that their life or freedom would be threatened if they returned to a specific country due to their race, religion, nationality, or political or social affiliation.
In order to get around orders protecting these migrants from deportation to their home countries, the administration is instead dumping them in what have been described as “third countries.”
The flight departed on Thursday is the first US deportation flight to the CAR, which is one of the poorest countries in the world and is reeling from a civil war that’s displaced more than a million people both inside and outside the country.
The country is under the State Department’s highest travel advisory, warning US citizens not to go there “due to risk of unrest, crime, kidnapping, landmines, health, and terrorism.”
“People on this flight proved to a judge that they were likely to be persecuted in their home countries,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “This is profoundly unjust.”
Human rights law experts Anjli Parrin and Savi Arvey wrote on Wednesday for Just Security that the administration was putting “lives at risk” by sending these migrants to a dangerous country where they know nobody and where basic healthcare infrastructure hardly exists.
They said the administration’s deportation of these migrants “is the latest example of its dangerous and potentially life-threatening strategy: using secretive deals with countries to expel asylum seekers and migrants with no legal or personal connection to the places where they are being sent.”
“Since early last year, the US government has signed a growing number of third-country forced transfer agreements with over 30 countries worldwide to expel and deport people to places where they have no legal or personal ties,” they said.
“These deportations are often carried out in secrecy and without any semblance of due process,” they added. “Individuals are often not given any advance warning or the opportunity to challenge their deportation to a third country—with many only discovering they are being sent to a country they may have never heard of while airborne.”
Emily Trostle, a lawyer for the Iranian activist, told Reuters that the migrants facing deportation to the CAR “have absolutely no connection to this place.”
“These individuals are being removed from the United States and abandoned in a country where they have no status, no connection, and no support network,” she said. “We fear they will ultimately be forced to return to the countries they originally fled.”
According to Human Rights First’s Third Country Deportation Watch, governments around the world have been given $44 million from US taxpayers to receive these migrants. More than 19,000 people, it found, have been deported across 24 countries.
Most of them have been sent to Mexico, but the US has also shipped migrants to some of the poorest, most unstable nations in sub-Saharan Africa, including Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Many have faced arbitrary detention and torture or been returned to the country where they fled persecution.
In order to avoid having to allow over 1,000 Afghans who fought alongside US soldiers to settle as refugees in the US as planned, the Trump administration is reportedly trying to ink a deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo to take them instead, but the plan was stalled amid public backlash, and the administration is seeking other options.
The Iranian American Legal Defense Fund said on Thursday that the deportation of Iranian nationals was a “potentially fatal action,” as they could face danger in the CAR or be sent back to Iran.
Another person scheduled to be deported to the CAR was an elderly man from Syria, whose immigration attorney, Margaret Stock, told the Times that he had scars all over his body due to torture in his home country.
He is a Sufi Muslim and feared persecution if he returned there, and is in danger of lacking access to care for his diabetes if sent to the CAR. According to Stock, he received an emergency temporary order halting his deportation.
Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee in charge of funding for the Department of Homeland Security and its immigration agencies, responded to the Times report on the deportations with outrage.
“It’s hard to fathom how deeply evil this is, and that we have people running our country who get sick pleasure from sending women fleeing violence in Iran to an African country in the middle of a brutal civil war,” he said.
Reichlin-Melnick agreed: “Evil is the right word for... taking people who are safe in the United States, who have proven to a judge they would be persecuted in their home country, and dumping them in a random country in the middle of a civil war.”
“No previous administration would have done this, despite it likely being legal,” he added.
(Photo by Pacome PABANDJI / AFP via Getty Images)
Stephen Prager
Jun 12, 2026
COMMON DREAMS
The US government advises Americans not to travel to the Central African Republic “for any reason.” But it just deported nearly two dozen people to the war-torn country, including several refugees who fled persecution in other nations.
On Friday morning, Human Rights First’s deportation flight tracker reported that a plane used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had landed in Accra, Ghana, after departing from Louisiana the previous day and was believed to be en route to the CAR’s capital, Bangui.
Per The New York Times on Thursday, the administration was preparing to deport “at least two Iranian women who had sought refuge in the United States” as well as “migrants from Afghanistan and Syria.”
According to their lawyers, several of the migrants had received court orders from judges prohibiting their deportation to their home countries, citing the risk of persecution there.
A lawyer for one of the Iranian women told the Times that neither of them has a criminal record and that they both have been granted court protection due to fear of threats to their freedom or lives if they returned to Iran. One is a Christian convert, and the other is a pro-democracy activist.
According to Reuters, just the activist ended up on the flight from Louisiana. But the Christian woman is still at risk, along with another Iranian national.
The burden of proof to receive what is known as a “withholding of removal” status from an immigration judge is even higher than that needed for migrants to qualify for asylum.
Those seeking their deportations to be halted must demonstrate that it’s more likely than not that their life or freedom would be threatened if they returned to a specific country due to their race, religion, nationality, or political or social affiliation.
In order to get around orders protecting these migrants from deportation to their home countries, the administration is instead dumping them in what have been described as “third countries.”
The flight departed on Thursday is the first US deportation flight to the CAR, which is one of the poorest countries in the world and is reeling from a civil war that’s displaced more than a million people both inside and outside the country.
The country is under the State Department’s highest travel advisory, warning US citizens not to go there “due to risk of unrest, crime, kidnapping, landmines, health, and terrorism.”
“People on this flight proved to a judge that they were likely to be persecuted in their home countries,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “This is profoundly unjust.”
Human rights law experts Anjli Parrin and Savi Arvey wrote on Wednesday for Just Security that the administration was putting “lives at risk” by sending these migrants to a dangerous country where they know nobody and where basic healthcare infrastructure hardly exists.
They said the administration’s deportation of these migrants “is the latest example of its dangerous and potentially life-threatening strategy: using secretive deals with countries to expel asylum seekers and migrants with no legal or personal connection to the places where they are being sent.”
“Since early last year, the US government has signed a growing number of third-country forced transfer agreements with over 30 countries worldwide to expel and deport people to places where they have no legal or personal ties,” they said.
“These deportations are often carried out in secrecy and without any semblance of due process,” they added. “Individuals are often not given any advance warning or the opportunity to challenge their deportation to a third country—with many only discovering they are being sent to a country they may have never heard of while airborne.”
Emily Trostle, a lawyer for the Iranian activist, told Reuters that the migrants facing deportation to the CAR “have absolutely no connection to this place.”
“These individuals are being removed from the United States and abandoned in a country where they have no status, no connection, and no support network,” she said. “We fear they will ultimately be forced to return to the countries they originally fled.”
According to Human Rights First’s Third Country Deportation Watch, governments around the world have been given $44 million from US taxpayers to receive these migrants. More than 19,000 people, it found, have been deported across 24 countries.
Most of them have been sent to Mexico, but the US has also shipped migrants to some of the poorest, most unstable nations in sub-Saharan Africa, including Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Many have faced arbitrary detention and torture or been returned to the country where they fled persecution.
In order to avoid having to allow over 1,000 Afghans who fought alongside US soldiers to settle as refugees in the US as planned, the Trump administration is reportedly trying to ink a deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo to take them instead, but the plan was stalled amid public backlash, and the administration is seeking other options.
The Iranian American Legal Defense Fund said on Thursday that the deportation of Iranian nationals was a “potentially fatal action,” as they could face danger in the CAR or be sent back to Iran.
Another person scheduled to be deported to the CAR was an elderly man from Syria, whose immigration attorney, Margaret Stock, told the Times that he had scars all over his body due to torture in his home country.
He is a Sufi Muslim and feared persecution if he returned there, and is in danger of lacking access to care for his diabetes if sent to the CAR. According to Stock, he received an emergency temporary order halting his deportation.
Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee in charge of funding for the Department of Homeland Security and its immigration agencies, responded to the Times report on the deportations with outrage.
“It’s hard to fathom how deeply evil this is, and that we have people running our country who get sick pleasure from sending women fleeing violence in Iran to an African country in the middle of a brutal civil war,” he said.
Reichlin-Melnick agreed: “Evil is the right word for... taking people who are safe in the United States, who have proven to a judge they would be persecuted in their home country, and dumping them in a random country in the middle of a civil war.”
“No previous administration would have done this, despite it likely being legal,” he added.
The first plane carrying Iranian, Afghan, Turkish and Georgian migrants deported from the United States arrived in Bangui in the Central African Republic on Friday evening as part of a controversial US programme to send undocumented foreigners – some of whom have legal protections – to third countries. The Central African Republic is the latest country to join the list of African nations that have agreed to accept people deported from the US.
Issued on: 13/06/2026
By: FRANCE 24
A general view shows part of the capital Bangui, Central African Republic on February 16, 2016. © Siegfried Modola, Reuters
A US deportation flight landed in the Central African Republic on Friday, lawyers and activists said, carrying nationals from Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey and Georgia as part of the latest "third-country" deportation under US President Donald Trump.
Deportations of people – including those with legal protections – to countries where they have no links have become a staple Trump's expanded crackdown on immigration.
The US State Department advisory for the impoverished, violence-wracked Central African Republic reads: "Do not travel to Central African Republic for any reason."
A US deportation flight landed in the Central African Republic on Friday, lawyers and activists said, carrying nationals from Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey and Georgia as part of the latest "third-country" deportation under US President Donald Trump.
Deportations of people – including those with legal protections – to countries where they have no links have become a staple Trump's expanded crackdown on immigration.
The US State Department advisory for the impoverished, violence-wracked Central African Republic reads: "Do not travel to Central African Republic for any reason."
Eye on Africa: Migrants deported from US stuck in DRC
Cover image: © France 24
01:49
01:49
Trump has described Iran, with whom Washington is currently at war, as a "terrorist regime" but is nonetheless deporting nationals who have fled the country, including at least two Iranian women slated for the flight, their lawyer said.
The Iranians had been granted "withholding of removal" – a status that carries weaker rights than asylum but has been considered a "win" in immigration court under previous administrations.
"We fear they will ultimately be forced to return to the countries they originally fled," as has repeatedly happened with other deportees sent across Africa, their attorney, Emily Trostle, told AFP.
The flight took off from Alexandria, Louisiana, on Thursday evening, according to the ICE Flight Monitor, affiliated with non-profit Human Rights First.
It then made a scheduled stopover in Ghana – which is itself a hub for third-country deportations – Friday afternoon and landed in Central African capital Bangui around 2100 GMT.
It was unclear if some people were to be taken off the plane in Ghana or if they were all sent to the Central African Republic, said Alma David, a US immigration lawyer familiar with the case.
Ghanaian immigration authorities did not respond to a request for comment.
She said those headed to the Central African Republic "are mainly withholding grantees from a variety of countries, including Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, Georgia".
In recent years, a United Nations peacekeeping mission, Rwandan troops and Russian mercenaries have helped to improve the Central African Republic's security situation.
But anti-government fighters and armed groups are still present throughout the unstable, mineral-rich country.
Previous allegations of abuse
As part of its crackdown, the Trump administration has expanded who is targeted for deportation and where they can be sent.
Washington has argued it is only barred from sending people with "withholding of removal" to their country of origin – and thus can send them anywhere else, even if those countries then send them home.
Deportees and lawyers have described unsanitary holding conditions in Ghana and indefinite detention in Eswatini, among other alleged abuses.
Failed American dream: Deportees restart their lives in Guatemala
Cover image: FOCUS © FRANCE 24
05:40
05:40
From Ghana and Equatorial Guinea, another African hub, some people have been sent back home to countries in which US judges ruled they faced danger.
It was not clear what would happen to the deportees upon arrival in the Central African Republic.
It appears to be Bangui's first accord with Washington, which has made a slew of opaque deportation deals in Africa and elsewhere.
"We don't know if these migrants who are coming to and will be received on Central African soil are in transit or if they are entitled to apply for asylum," Paul Crescent Beninga, a political scientist and civil society leader, told AFP.
"The government doesn't want to provide any answers, the government isn't communicating."
A State Department spokesman said "we remain unwavering in our commitment to end illegal and mass immigration" but did not answer questions about the terms of the deal.
Central African authorities did not respond to a request for comment.
"These individuals are being removed from the United States and abandoned in a country where they have no status, no connection and no support network," Trostle said.
Last week, a lawsuit was filed with the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights – the continent's top human rights body – to halt US deportations to Equatorial Guinea, a small, authoritarian petro-state that has served as a waystation for African deportees.
The lawsuit also seeks to stop Equatorial Guinea's onward expulsion of the deportees to their home countries.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
It was not clear what would happen to the deportees upon arrival in the Central African Republic.
It appears to be Bangui's first accord with Washington, which has made a slew of opaque deportation deals in Africa and elsewhere.
"We don't know if these migrants who are coming to and will be received on Central African soil are in transit or if they are entitled to apply for asylum," Paul Crescent Beninga, a political scientist and civil society leader, told AFP.
"The government doesn't want to provide any answers, the government isn't communicating."
A State Department spokesman said "we remain unwavering in our commitment to end illegal and mass immigration" but did not answer questions about the terms of the deal.
Central African authorities did not respond to a request for comment.
"These individuals are being removed from the United States and abandoned in a country where they have no status, no connection and no support network," Trostle said.
Last week, a lawsuit was filed with the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights – the continent's top human rights body – to halt US deportations to Equatorial Guinea, a small, authoritarian petro-state that has served as a waystation for African deportees.
The lawsuit also seeks to stop Equatorial Guinea's onward expulsion of the deportees to their home countries.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
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