Liberia Joins Trump’s ‘Third-Country Deportation’ Network
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter flight landed in Liberia Thursday, likely carrying immigrants with no ties to the country, marking Liberia’s entrance into the Trump administration’s network of countries taking so-called third-country nationals.
Liberia announced Tuesday it would accept up to 1,200 third-country nationals from the U.S. over the next year, starting with a group of 20 people scheduled to arrive Thursday. It described the arrangement, which will include deported people from countries in Africa and the Western Hemisphere, as a “humanitarian” gesture in line with its history as a refuge for formerly enslaved Black Americans.
The ICE charter flight believed to be carrying the immigrants was operated by Eastern Airlines and landed in the capital city of Monrovia on Thursday after leaving the ICE detention hub in Alexandria, Louisiana, on Wednesday night, flight data shows. The same aircraft sent dozens of third-country nationals to three African countries in late July. Eastern and its sister company Eastern Air Express flew about 550 of ICE’s 2,100 flights last month, according to Human Rights First. It is not related to the historical Eastern Air Lines, other than buying the old trademark.
At least one of the expected arrivals is from Brazil, according to an immigration attorney whose client was told he would be sent there.
An estimated 23,000 people have been subjected to third-country removal so far in President Trump’s second term, according to Refugees International and Human Rights First. Nearly all are either asylum seekers whose cases were closed without getting a hearing, or immigrants who had won judicial protections barring deportation to their countries of origin. Many had been living in the United States with these protections for decades.
Immigrant rights groups say the Trump administration is using third-country removal to illegally get around those judicial protections and as a threat to coerce immigrants into giving up on their cases and leaving the U.S. “voluntarily.”
Once a rarely used maneuver that usually involved resettlement in a “safe third country” like Canada, the Trump administration has now negotiated third-country “host” agreements with at least 35 countries, many of them unstable and/or under authoritarian rule. Liberia is the 12th country in Africa known to be taking third-country nationals.
Once expelled, many people end up living on the streets in the “host country,” while a few have been imprisoned indefinitely without charge. Some are detained in hotels and pressured to return to their countries of origin, while others aren’t even allowed to leave the airport before being forced onto a flight to their country of origin.
Sending someone to a country that will subsequently send them back to a place where they could face persecution or torture is called “chain refoulement” and is barred by the Convention Against Torture, of which the U.S. is a signatory. Many of these removals are being challenged in courts in the U.S., host countries, and international governing bodies.
Liberia, for its part, claimed the immigrants sent there would be “received as guests” and “accorded full Liberian hospitality,” including being provided with shelter and an opportunity to apply for asylum. The statement does not say if they’ll have freedom of movement while in Liberia, though it does say they “shall remain free to depart the country when they so desire.”
Ghana, another West African republic that has been taking third-country nationals since last year, has made similarly humanitarian-sounding assurances, while immigrants sent there describe a very different reality, including being imprisoned in outdoor camps, beatings, and being forced back to their home countries or across the border to Togo.
While many host countries have taken payments for third-country nationals, or been promised tariff relief or other benefits from the Trump administration, Liberia insisted there was “no quid pro quo” and it had neither demanded nor received compensation in the deal, though it “would receive support to help manage the program and strengthen its migration system more broadly.”
It is unclear what that support entails, or what “strengthen its migration system more broadly” means. Some countries have attempted to get relief from Trump’s travel ban for its citizens while negotiating these agreements with the State Department, though none appear to have been successful so far. (Liberia is not currently under a travel ban, though it was placed on a list of 36 countries under consideration for one in June 2025. A State Department memo intimated then that countries accepting third-country removals would not face a ban.)
ICE-chartered jets have made at least 14 removal stops to Liberia during Trump’s second term, not including Thursday’s stop, according to my analysis of public flight data. In the last 18 months of President Biden’s term, flight data collected by Tom Cartwright at Witness at the Border shows only five removal stops there.
ICE and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment. A representative for the Department of Homeland Security who did not identify themselves referred questions to the State Department. A State representative who did not identify themselves declined to comment on the agreement with Liberia but pointed to Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying, “We remain unwavering in our commitment to end illegal and mass immigration and bolster America’s border security.”
Talks between Liberia and the Trump administration appear to have begun in July 2025 during the White House’s hastily planned “Africa Summit,” which included only five of the continent’s more than 50 heads of state. Officials later acknowledged third-country removals had been discussed privately. The summit’s public-facing events were notable for a confused President Trump asking Liberian President Joseph Boakai where he learned to speak English so beautifully, not seeming to realize the country was founded in 1822 by Black Americans, who then, as now, spoke English.
Liberia’s possible participation in third-country removals first became public last fall, when the Department of Justice told the courts it wanted to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia there. Garcia is the Maryland father ICE mistakenly deported to El Salvador’s CECOT prison in March 2025, before being ordered to return him to the U.S. Upon his return, DOJ charged him on specious human-trafficking charges, which a judge threw out in May of this year.
Hours before Liberia’s announcement Tuesday, DOJ filed an appeal in an attempt to revive the charges. His removal case is ongoing.
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