The final destination of the ‘third country’ labyrinth: Migrants stripped of rights and deported to the place they fled

Secrecy and the loss of contact with family members and lawyers have characterized the deportations to third countries carried out by the Trump administration as part of its campaign against immigrants. An uncertain fate and no guarantees about the conditions endured by individuals sent to countries with which they have no ties have been the norm in these expulsions. Over time, many of them have ended up back in the countries they originally fled, where they face persecution or torture.

This is the case of Rabbiatu Kuyateh, who has made headlines because of a viral video documenting the mistreatment she suffers. In it, this 58-year-old nurse from Maryland is seen being violently dragged along the ground by men who appear to be officials from Ghana, the country to which she was deported days earlier. Kuyateh resisted in vain to avoid being sent back to Sierra Leone, the country where she was born and which she fled, and where she is currently in hiding.

Hers is a story like that of many migrants who, through the Administration’s stratagems, have ended up in the countries they fled without the U.S. government actually violating its own rules against sending them there directly. Instead, they have done so through a third government, such as Ghana’s. The White House maintains that it had guarantees that those deported to this African country would not be sent back to their countries of origin, but there are serious doubts about whether this was the case. This is especially true after the Ghana government itself denied the existence of any such agreement. Immigration experts see this as a strategy by Washington to protect itself from potential litigation.

“It was a solution to a problem: ‘We can remove these people from our custody and at the same time not break the law,’” Alexandra Williams, one of the lawyers on Kuyateh’s legal team, explained to EL PAÍS. The Sierra Leonean woman arrived in the U.S. 30 years ago fleeing the war in her country, where, due to her family’s political activism, she suffered torture and persecution.

She worked as a nurse in Maryland, where she had built a life. Her son, now an adult, was born in the U.S., while her parents were naturalized American citizens. Kuyateh, for her part, had a work permit and was under supervision, but it was enough to attend annual immigration checks. Everything seemed to be in order. “She went to those appointments every year to confirm that she was still in the country. She has no criminal record, and her address was up to date. She never missed an appointment,” says Williams, who explains that her client had protection against deportation to Sierra Leone.

Everything changed with the Trump administration, and her July appointment turned into an ambush. “They told her that because of the changes in the administration and its policies, they had to arrest her and remove her from the country, since she had a deportation order,” Williams says.

Her son hasn’t seen her since. She was arrested and, after a few days, transferred to a detention center in Louisiana. The next destination was Ghana. On the flight, she was accompanied by other migrants, handcuffed and shackled, like her, with the same uncertain fate. Over the phone, she told her son about the brutality with which they were treated, a brutality that also left its mark through injuries on her body.

The African nation is one of the latest destinations the Trump administration has chosen to send migrants it cannot directly return to their countries of origin because they have court-ordered protection. According to Human Rights First, which tracks deportation flights, the United States has carried out at least 21 flights with people from third countries to 10 destinations: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Eswatini, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Uzbekistan. In addition, thousands of people have been transported to Mexico by land.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attempts to carry out the transfers secretly and as quickly as possible. In April, Massachusetts federal judge Brian E. Murphy issued a preliminary injunction requiring the government to give people at least 15 days to challenge their deportations to third countries, where they may face retaliation. However, two months later, the Supreme Court granted a stay, overturning Murphy’s order.

Human rights organizations denounce the violation of a basic principle of U.S. and international law that prohibits deporting people to a place where they may suffer torture, persecution, or other serious harm. But the administration is not giving detainees time to express their fears, as happened to Kuyateh, who was not allowed to voice her fear of being deported to Ghana, much less back to Sierra Leone.

The organization Amica Center for Immigrant Rights reports that deportations to third countries, followed by subsequent return to the countries from which people fled, have increased in recent weeks. “There are many people in that situation. Several have been deported to Mexico and are at risk of being sent back to their country of origin,” says Kelly Rojas, an immigration attorney with Amica Center. Rojas declined to provide specific cases due to concerns for her clients’ safety. One of them was also sent to Ghana and then transferred to the West African country he fled, despite having a protective order preventing it. When he was deported, the lawyers lost contact and, as is often the case, received no information about where he was sent. “This person disappeared from the system. We called several ICE offices, and they told us different things about where he had been transferred,” Rojas recounts.

Maintaining contact once they arrive in their home countries is complicated, and continuing their defense is very difficult, since U.S. immigration lawyers cannot practice there. In these cases, it’s necessary to try to contact other local human rights organizations that can continue their advocacy. Exhaustion and hopelessness lead many to eventually give up. “What the United States government is doing right now is killing their will to fight for their rights. Some clients who are deported to their countries of origin have been in detention for so long that, even though their lives are in danger—which is why a judge in the United States issued them protective orders—they think that at least they are no longer in the detention center,” Rojas maintains.

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