Sierra Leone receives first group of West African deportees from US

The first plane carrying nine migrants from West African countries has arrived from the United States to Sierra Leone, making it the latest African country to receive migrants expelled under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Wednesday’s arrivals at the airport near the capital, Freetown, included five people from Ghana, two from Guinea, one from Senegal and one more from Nigeria, according to Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Internal Affairs’ statement.

All were “traumatised due to the months in chains during detention in the US,” said Doris Bah, a health ministry official at the scene, adding that most of them 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.

Foreign Minister Timothy Musa Kabba told the media on Wednesday that the government has agreed to receive migrants for about 90 days before their onward journey to their home countries, and that the agreement is supported by a $1.5m grant from the US government “to cover the humanitarian and operational costs linked to this agreement”.

The US has struck such third-country deportation deals with at least eight other African nations, many of them among countries hit hardest by the Trump administration’s policies restricting trade, aid and migration.

The other African nations known to sign deals are the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, South Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and Cameroon.

Freetown has not said whether other concessions were agreed upon.

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”.