Democratic Republic of Congo is set to receive more than 30 deportees from the United States \u200bthis week, four sources told Reuters, the latest example of Washington using agreements with African governments to accelerate migrant removals.<\/p>\n
The deportees are all from \u200ccountries other than Congo, and at least some are from Central and South America, according to one source and U.S. court documents. One source familiar with the matter said they would total 37, while another put the figure at 45.<\/p>\n
They will be the first to land in the Central African country as part of an agreement with the Trump administration announced on\u00a0April 5, two days after \u200bReuters reported the two countries were negotiating a deal for Congo to receive third-country deportees.<\/p>\n
The move coincides with the Trump administration’s efforts to implement a\u00a0U.S.-brokered peace \u200bdeal\u00a0between Congo and Rwanda aimed at ending fighting with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels in eastern Congo that has killed thousands and \u2060displaced hundreds of thousands more. It also follows the signing of\u00a0a strategic partnership\u00a0granting the United States preferential access to Congo’s critical minerals.<\/p>\n
The timing of the arrival of \u200bthe deportees and details on how they will be accommodated in Congo have not been previously reported.<\/p>\n
The deportees are expected to reach Congo by Friday and be housed in \u200ba hotel near Kinshasa’s main airport, three of the sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the move, which has attracted criticism from human rights groups and opposition politicians in Congo.<\/p>\n
The U.S. has previously sent third-country deportees to African states including\u00a0Ghana,\u00a0Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and , drawing criticism from legal experts and rights groups over the legal basis for the transfers and \u200bthe treatment of deportees sent to countries where they are not nationals.<\/p>\n
Some of the deportees were later\u00a0returned to their home countries\u00a0despite receiving court-ordered protection in the U.S. \u200bmeant to prevent that from happening.<\/p>\n
A Congolese government spokesperson did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. Kinshasa has previously stressed it will not spend any money as part of \u200cits third-country \u2060deportees deal with the United States.<\/p>\n
A State Department spokesperson said Washington had “no comment on the details of our diplomatic communications with other governments.”<\/p>\n
LONG-TERM PLAN UNCLEAR<\/strong><\/p>\n The hotel near the airport in Kinshasa is due to house the deportees for only 10 to 15 days, one of the sources told Reuters. The source was unable to say what will happen to the deportees after that period.<\/p>\n The hotel will remain open to other guests and the deportees will be free to move around, a diplomat and a senior humanitarian source said.<\/p>\n The \u200bdeportees will be accommodated in single rooms, \u200bwith two meals a day provided. \u2060The site is being secured by Congo’s national police and a private security firm.<\/p>\n Neither Washington nor Kinshasa has said how many deportees would ultimately be sent to Congo.<\/p>\n U.N. AGENCY TO AID DEPORTEES<\/strong><\/p>\n The deportees arriving this week will receive assistance from the U.N.-related International \u200bOrganization for Migration (IOM), two sources said.<\/p>\n IOM has also provided assistance to third-country deportees sent from the U.S. to Eswatini and Cameroon.<\/p>\n IOM \u200bsaid in a statement \u2060it had no role in the deportations themselves, which it said were handled by the two governments. It said it could, at the request of Congolese authorities, provide “post-arrival humanitarian assistance”.<\/p>\n An IOM source told Reuters earlier this month that the U.S.-Congo deportation deal could involve migrants from South America, including Venezuelans.<\/p>\n Reuters identified at least four migrants whose lawyers were told by U.S. \u2060Immigration and \u200bCustoms Enforcement that they would be deported to Congo this week. They are from Colombia, Peru, Chile \u200band Guatemala.<\/p>\n An April 8 court order from a federal judge in California, reviewed by Reuters, said the U.S. government planned to remove a Peruvian migrant to Congo. The migrant had his request for asylum rejected but \u200bhad been granted protection against deportation to Peru because he feared persecution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Democratic Republic of Congo is set to receive more than 30 deportees from the United States \u200bthis week, four sources told Reuters, the latest example of Washington using agreements with African governments to accelerate migrant removals. The deportees are all from \u200ccountries other than Congo, and at least some are from Central and South America, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":20416,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,29,32,2362,2377],"tags":[3016,385],"class_list":["post-20513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-east-africa","category-economy","category-featured","category-migration","tag-democratic-republic-of-congo-drc","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20513"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20514,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20513\/revisions\/20514"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}