The Trump administration has planned to deport several Iranians and other migrants to Central African Republic, sources told Reuters news agency.
Central African Republic has been a chronically unstable country, marred by years of violence and poverty.
Reuters spoke to two lawyers and an official who was briefed on the matter.
Emily Trostle, their lawyer, said that the Iranians included two women who could face torture and persecution if they were forced to go back to Iran as one was a Christian convert and the other was a pro-democracy activist.
The U.S State Department and the Presidency in the Central African Republic recently reached an agreement to accept “third-country” deportees from the United States. However, neither of them have responded to requests for comment on this particular case.
Trostle said the women were detained upon arriving in the United States in November 2024. They reportedly applied for asylum and secured a form of protection known as withholding of removal from a U.S immigration judge. This meant the judges found that they faced a risk greater than 50% of being persecuted or tortured in the Islamic Republic.
The official told Reuters that the first flight to Central African Republic under the agreement was expected to board 20 people, including Syrians and Afghans. According to the official, they would be held in apartments in the country’s capital Bangui and were not expected to be repatriated immediately.
The second lawyer, who chose to remain anonymous, said the plan might also include a Turkish national who fled political persecution and possessed a withholding of removal.
Third-country deportation deals
The Trump administration has used third-country deportation deals to deport people it can’t legally send home. The United States had also sent deportees to Central African Republic’s neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is currently facing an Ebola outbreak along with a humanitarian crisis due to decades of armed conflict, under this deal.
Despite backlash from rights groups and advocates, who have said the details of the deals were not transparent and that many deportees would be ultimately repatriated, the United States continued to defend the deal as lawful.
