US begins deporting non-citizens to Liberia under Trump pact

On Thursday morning, a plane touched down at Roberts International Airport outside Monrovia carrying twenty people who had never set foot in Liberia before and had no legal claim to be there. They were the first arrivals under a new deportation agreement between the United States and the West African nation—an arrangement that will eventually send up to 1,200 non-citizens to a country that is not their home. It represents one of the Trump administration's most expansive efforts to date in what has become a quiet but systematic practice: removing people from American soil by sending them not to their countries of origin, but to third nations willing to accept them.

The agreement itself remains largely opaque. The State Department declined to discuss specifics, citing operational security. Homeland Security refused even to confirm that Thursday's deportation had occurred. What is known comes from Liberian officials: the deportees will include nationals from across Africa, North America, South America, and the Caribbean. Liberian Information Minister Jerolinmek Piah confirmed the arrivals. Justice Minister Natu Oswald Tweh noted that those sent to Liberia could apply for asylum there if they chose to stay. The State Department's only public statement emphasized that implementing the administration's immigration policies was a "top priority" and that it remained "unwavering in our commitment to end illegal and mass immigration and bolster America's border security."

This arrangement with Liberia is not an anomaly. The Trump administration has negotiated similar agreements with at least thirty-five countries across Africa and beyond. According to Third Country Deportation Watch—a partnership of Refugees International and Human Rights First that tracks these agreements through public records requests and news reports—more than 23,000 people have already been deported to twenty-six countries under such pacts. The scale is substantial, yet the machinery operates largely in shadow. These agreements are typically kept confidential. The Liberia accord, signed in September 2025, was posted on the State Department website but contains no details about how many people would be sent or which nationalities they would represent.

The human consequences of this system have begun to surface in specific cases. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen, was mistakenly deported to El Salvador in October 2025—sent to a prison in the very country he had fled. Unable to return him to the United States and blocked from sending him back to his native country through normal channels, the Trump administration decided to deport him to a third nation instead. Liberia was proposed as a destination. Abrego Garcia has stated he would accept deportation to Costa Rica, and that country has agreed to take him. The administration has declined to send him there. Instead, Abrego Garcia is now fighting his removal to Liberia through a federal lawsuit filed in Maryland, one man caught in the machinery of a policy designed to move people across borders with minimal oversight.

Human rights organizations have raised alarms about the practice. Migrants deported under these agreements often arrive in countries where they have no connections, no language skills, no legal status, and sometimes face genuine safety risks. Many find themselves with few options except to attempt the journey back to the countries they originally fled. The secrecy surrounding these arrangements means that neither Congress nor the public has clear visibility into who is being deported, where they are going, or what happens to them after arrival. The Liberia agreement illustrates the pattern: a nation agrees to accept deportees, the United States begins sending people, and the details remain locked away. What comes next for those twenty people who landed in Monrovia on Thursday, and for the thousands more expected to follow, remains largely unknown.