A plane transporting nine West Africans deported by the Trump administration arrived in Sierra Leone on Wednesday, part of Washington’s latest deal \u200bwith an African country aimed at accelerating removals.<\/p>\n
Foreign Minister Timothy Kabba \u200ctold Reuters\u00a0last week\u00a0that Freetown had agreed to take in 300 West African migrants annually who were being deported by the U.S., with no more than 25 arriving each month.<\/p>\n
The deportees \u200bwho arrived on Wednesday included seven men and two women from Ghana, \u200bSenegal, Guinea and Nigeria, said Patrick Robin, head of Kenvah Solutions, \u2060the private contractor hired to house the deportees at two hotels near the \u200bairport.<\/p>\n
It was unclear how long the deportees would be able to stay in \u200bSierra Leone. A government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. “We will look after them in a dignified and comfortable way for up to two weeks,” Robin said, adding that \u200bin “exceptional circumstances” some could stay in the facilities for 30 days.<\/p>\n
Sierra Leone’s arrangement \u200bto accept only deportees from West African countries is similar to Ghana’s. Reuters has \u200con how \u2060deportees sent to Ghana, Equatorial Guinea and elsewhere on the continent have then been forced to return to their home countries despite receiving court-ordered protection in the U.S. meant to prevent that from happening.<\/p>\n
Robin said “most of” those who arrived in \u200bSierra Leone on Wednesday \u200bsaid they wanted \u2060to go home. However, a Reuters witness said at least one of the deportees appeared to resist getting off the \u200bflight on Wednesday before being persuaded to do so.<\/p>\n
It is \u200bnot clear \u2060what, if anything, Sierra Leone is getting in exchange for taking in the deportees.<\/p>\n
In a published in February, Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the total \u2060cost of \u200bthird-country removals was unknown, but that more than $32 \u200bmillion had been sent directly to five countries – Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, El Salvador, Eswatini and Palau.<\/p>\n
A State \u200bDepartment spokesperson declined to comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A plane transporting nine West Africans deported by the Trump administration arrived in Sierra Leone on Wednesday, part of Washington’s latest deal \u200bwith an African country aimed at accelerating removals. Foreign Minister Timothy Kabba \u200ctold Reuters\u00a0last week\u00a0that Freetown had agreed to take in 300 West African migrants annually who were being deported by the U.S., […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20937,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"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":[2362,2377,27],"tags":[1643,1999,158,248,175,283,1770,5160],"class_list":["post-20936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-migration","category-west-africa","tag-donald-trump","tag-freetown","tag-ghana","tag-guinea","tag-nigeria","tag-senegal","tag-sierra-leone","tag-timothy-kabba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20936","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20938,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20936\/revisions\/20938"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}