Third Country Removals

I was chatting with (okay, ranting to) a non-immigration person about third country removals and the Trump Administration's penchant for sending non-African migrants to African countries. (This is a topic I've blogged about previously here and here.) This person responded with something along these lines: "Well, at least they are going to countries who want them and will protect them--places where they'll be free to live and work, right?"

You can imagine my spit-take response. "Um, yeah, no. Some migrants are taken straight from the plane that brought them from the U.S. to a detention center in the country that has agreed to receive them. That just might mean an indefinite stay in a maximum security prison or solitary confinement." (I'm looking at you Eswatini and Cameroon.) I followed up with: "Remember the removal of migrants to CECOT in El Salvador? It's not like the playbook has changed."

Of course, there's another alternative: The third-country may just return a migrant to the country they fled. WaPo recently reported on the fate of one such migrant who fled Togo to avoid female genital mutilation. Her case was heard by an immigration judge in the U.S. who granted relief under CAT, prohibiting her return to Togo. Thereafter, the U.S. arranged her removal to Ghana, a neighbor of Togo. She spent two weeks in a Ghanian detention facility. Then, Ghana deported her to Togo, where she now lives in hiding.

<screaming rage>