Liberia announced Tuesday that it will accept up to 1,200 third-country deportees from the U.S. over the next year under an agreement between the two countries.
The agreement marks one of the largest arrangements of its kind under the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown. Liberia's President Joseph Boakai was one of five West African leaders who traveled to the White House last year to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump.
As part of the arrangement, the first group of 20 deportees are expected to arrive on Thursday, Liberia’s Information Minister Jerolinmek Piah told reporters.
The 1,200 deportees who will be sent to the country within the next 12 months will include Africans as well as nationals from North America, South America and the Caribbean, Piah said.
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Piah said the deportees would be received "as guests," adding that they could leave when they wanted and apply for asylum in Liberia.
He also said Liberia will receive support from the U.S. to manage the program and strengthen its migration system. But he said the deal was not part of a quid pro quo with the U.S. government and that the African nation was not demanding compensation in exchange for taking in the deportees.
"Liberia’s gesture is entirely humanitarian and in keeping with the country’s longstanding traditions," he said. "The government of Liberia intends to provide the transferred persons with the necessary support to seek protection in Liberia and to be safe during their stay here."
Liberia's government referenced its historical ties to the United States, including its roots in a 19th-century settlement established for free and formerly enslaved Black Americans and its history as a country with "a long history of accepting people seeking refuge from political and other crises."
Liberia’s Justice Minister Natu Oswald Tweh said that the country has screened the migrants ahead of their arrival.
"Most of them are people who had immigration violations and offenses," he said.
The Liberian government said the arriving deportees are not criminals and are not being prosecuted under U.S. or Liberian law.
Since Trump returned to the White House in January of last year, his administration has reached several deals with African countries to accept third-country deportees, including in some cases migrants who have legal protections barring their return to their countries of origin because of risks of torture, persecution or other abuses. It was not immediately clear whether any members of the group being sent to Liberia have such protections.
Under several agreements that have not always been publicly disclosed in full, the administration has deported thousands of people to nearly two dozen countries that are not their own, with about 10 of them in Africa, according to immigration advocates.
The administration has defended the third-country deals as lawful, saying federal immigration law permits the government to remove migrants to willing third countries. The Supreme Court last year stayed a lower-court order that had imposed additional procedural requirements on third-country removals while litigation continued.
The U.S.-Liberia agreement says Liberia will not return a transferred person to their home country while a protection claim is pending and that both governments intend to act consistently with their obligations under refugee and anti-torture law.
Rights groups say some migrants have been sent to countries they have never visited or where they could face safety risks, potentially increasing pressure on them to return to their countries of origin.
Other African countries that have taken in third-country deportees include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Ghana and Sierra Leone.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.