America Is Dumping Deportees in Africa to Terrify Other Migrants

Imagine being chained to a seat for up to eighteen hours, never told where the plane is going, and then pushed out into a country where you have no family, no language, and no legal right to remain. Now imagine that the policy behind that flight was designed to make the people watching it afraid.

That is not a thought experiment. Human Rights Watch interviewed 24 people deported from the United States to six African countries: Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, and South Sudan. Some described the chains. Some described the silence. None were told where they were going. And an unnamed US official, speaking at a Senate hearing, admitted what the rest of the machinery has been trying to hide. The choice of distant destinations, the official said, was partly meant to frighten other migrants. "The point is to scare people."

Read that again. A democracy that claims to be the beacon of human rights has built a deterrent out of human beings, and it has chosen Africa as the dumping ground.

Let us be precise about the numbers, because precision is what separates a case from a rant. ICE data cited by Human Rights Watch shows more than 500 people have been deported from the US to African countries that are not their own since President Trump returned to office in January 2025. A separate investigation by the Forbidden Stories consortium, published in September, estimated that around 25,000 people had been sent to destinations worldwide under the third-country deportation programme. Behind those figures are families who will never learn what happened to their sons, and men and women who were sent to places where being themselves is a crime.

Human Rights Watch reports that at least a dozen LGBTQI+ people were deported to African countries where same-sex relations are criminalised or heavily repressed. Think about what that means in practical terms. A person fleeing persecution in one country is flown to another where the same persecution is written into the penal code. This is what the 1951 Refugee Convention's principle of non-refoulement exists to prevent. Article 33 forbids sending people back to places where their life or freedom is threatened. The Convention Against Torture carries a parallel prohibition. The United States has signed both frameworks and lectures the rest of the world about them every single year.

And here is where the story turns on us. The agreements that make this possible are largely secret or only partly disclosed. An AFP investigation earlier this year found that Washington used diplomatic and economic leverage to bring governments to the table, including threats of higher tariffs, restrictions on visas, and cuts to development aid. Burundi, a country already buckling under severe economic and humanitarian strain, became the fifteenth African nation to agree to receive US deportees this month.

So we must ask the question that African leaders would rather we did not ask. What did Burundi get? What did the others get? And why are the terms of agreements that affect the bodies, safety, and dignity of our people being negotiated in rooms our citizens are not allowed to enter?

Some will say this is simply the price of diplomacy, that poor countries must take what powerful ones offer. We reject that. A government that accepts foreign people on its soil in exchange for relief from pressure is not practising diplomacy. It is renting out its sovereignty. Its citizens bear the security risks, the strain on public services, and the reputational damage, while the deals are signed by a few officials and sealed behind closed doors. This is the same pattern we have seen when foreign powers sign mining concessions, security pacts, and debt arrangements that bind whole nations for decades. Only the signatory changes. The extraction stays the same.

The deeper truth is this. For decades, Western governments have told Africa that democracy, human rights, and the rule of law are universal values. They have sanctioned our dictators when it suited them and forgiven them when it did not. Now the same governments are treating African soil as a warehouse for human beings they do not want, and treating African capitals as cheap receivers of their unwanted cargo. Washington cannot claim to defend the rule of law while it violates non-refoulement at scale. It cannot claim to champion dignity while it chains people for eighteen hours. And it cannot claim moral authority while it purchases compliance from governments that cannot afford to refuse.

The solutions are not mysterious. They are the building blocks of any system that takes law seriously.

First, every agreement that sends foreign nationals to African countries must be published. Parliaments across the continent should demand the texts, the financial terms, and the list of commitments made by both sides. No government should accept deportees whose files it has not seen and whose legal status it cannot verify. African legislatures that rubber-stamp executive deals in the dark are failing their constitutions and their voters.

Second, the African Union and regional bodies such as ECOWAS and SADC should establish a common standard. No member state should receive a third-country deportee without a documented individual assessment, legal representation, and an enforceable guarantee that the person will not face torture, persecution, or discrimination. The OAU Refugee Convention of 1969 already gives us a continental framework on protecting people fleeing danger. We should use it as a shield, not leave it gathering dust.

Third, the countries that have shown what good governance looks like should lead the way. Botswana has built one of the most stable democracies on the continent through competent institutions and disciplined public finance. Mauritius has shown that transparent governance and open markets attract investment without selling the state. Senegal, through its peaceful democratic transitions, proved that citizens can hold leaders to account through the ballot box. These nations understand that sovereignty is not the right to say yes to anything a donor offers. It is the duty to protect the people you serve.

Civil society has a role too. Human rights groups, journalists, and legal clinics across Africa should track every deportee who lands on their soil, document their conditions, and publish the names of officials who signed off on the arrangements. Sunlight is the cheapest reform we have.

And we, the citizens, must demand more than outrage. Ask your MP whether your country has signed a deportation agreement. Ask what it received in return. Ask whether anyone has checked the legal status of the people arriving at your airport. Ask your government to publish the terms. If the answer is silence, that silence is the answer.

Here is the call to action, and it is not optional. African governments must stop selling their people's safety for relief from foreign pressure, and they must do it now, before the next flight lands. Parliaments must demand every agreement in full. The African Union must set and enforce a continental standard against refoulement. Washington must stop using human beings as deterrents and honour the conventions it has already signed. And every one of us must refuse to accept the lie that Africa is a place where the world's rejects can be quietly stored.

We are not a warehouse. We are not a bargaining chip. We are 1.4 billion people who deserve governments that answer to them, and a world that keeps its promises. Make your leaders prove it.

Based on reporting by RFI