The first group of 20 deportees from the United States has landed at Roberts International Airport in Monrovia, Liberia. The Thursday flight is the first transfer under an agreement announced Tuesday that could bring up to 1,200 people to Liberia over the coming year.
Most of those on the flight were from Latin American countries, including Venezuela and Cuba. After landing, the group boarded a bus and was taken away by Liberian authorities without being allowed to speak to reporters.
What Liberia’s agreement provides
Liberia’s Information Ministry said the people transferred to the country are not criminals and are not being prosecuted there. Those brought to Liberia will be allowed to apply for asylum and will be free to leave the country when they choose.
Information Minister Jerolinmek Piah said the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations refugee agency would help provide services for the deportees.
Liberia denies a financial exchange
The ministry denied that Liberia accepted the transfers in return for money or other benefits. It said the arrangement was “not a transaction with a quid pro quo” and that Liberia had neither demanded nor received compensation or a promise of reward for joining the program.
The United States awarded Liberia $5m this year for “migration management activities”. The ministry’s statement, however, said that funding was not compensation for the transfer agreement.
A wider US policy facing scrutiny
The Liberia flight is part of the Trump administration’s expanding use of third-country deportations, in which foreign nationals are sent to countries other than their own. Human Rights First says the administration has reached agreements with at least 35 countries since Donald Trump began his second term as US president in 2025.
Senate Democrats estimated in February that at least $40m had been spent on such arrangements during the first year of the second term. Critics question whether smaller countries are being used as a “dumping ground” and whether people forcibly sent abroad will have adequate access to services, particularly when they do not speak the local language.
The Trump administration has described the transfers as necessary when migrants’ home countries will not accept them and as a deterrent to irregular migration. Liberia has presented its participation in the context of its history of accepting people seeking refuge from political and other crises.
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