US deportations to African countries unlawful and exploit suffering – rights group

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"Many, if not most" of the deportees have no practical option but to return to their home countries regardless of the harm they face there, HRW says in a report.

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025, more than 500 people have been sent to African countries where they are not citizens, the group says, citing US data.

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said "third country removals are an essential public safety tool that remove the most dangerous criminal illegal aliens from our streets".

Tackling immigration was one of Trump's key pledges during the 2024 election.

Eswatini, which welcomed 32 deportees from the US, says three people – from Yemen, Belize and Laos – "voluntarily departed" to their home countries recently.

According to HRW, some of the countries accepting the deportees have "arbitrarily detained" or sent them to their home countries, where they face "the risk of persecution or torture".

The group said that people sent to Eswatini, Ghana and South Sudan, had been arbitrarily detained and faced ill-treatment while in detention.

In Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Ghana, the deportees had been sent to their countries of origin despite the risk of "violating the principle of nonrefoulement [that people should not be sent to a country where they face torture, cruel treatment, or threats to their life and freedom]", it said.

The group cited an unnamed US official as having told a Senate hearing that the point for the administration was that it could "threaten people that they will literally be dropped in the middle of nowhere".

"The point is to scare people," HRW said.

"Deporting people to countries where they have never set foot is part of a US policy designed to cause human suffering as a means to deter migration," said Michael Garcia Bochenek, the group's interim US programme director.

In a statement from to the BBC, DHS said: "ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is given diplomatic assurances from destination countries that the illegal aliens being removed there will be safe. When an individual is no longer in ICE custody, ICE is no longer responsible for them."

None of the African countries named has commented on the report.

However, while announcing the recent departure of three migrants on Wednesday, Eswatini said that it was committed to ensuring that the "rights, dignity and well-being of third-country nationals were respected and protected".

HRW said it interviewed 24 third-country nationals in six countries – Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini and South Sudan.

Some described to the group "abusive treatment" during their deportation flights, including being chained for about 18 hours and with no knowledge of their destination. They were also "denied access to essential medication, and often did not receive sufficient food or water".

"The opaque deals that facilitate these transfers, some of which are still secret, are part of a US policy that violates international human rights law," HRW says.

According to the report, at least a dozen people who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) were sent to African states that criminalise same-sex relations.

Among them were refugees granted protection in the US based on the likelihood they would be persecuted back home because of their orientation or gender identity.

In November, a Nigerian man deported from the US initially to Ghana expressed his fears to the BBC after he and five others were secretly transferred to Togo.

He spoke of his fears about returning to Nigeria, where his association with a separatist activist group could lead to his arrest and torture.

In DR Congo, HRW says it was told by a US lawyer that of the 15 people from Colombia, Peru and Ecuador deported to the country in April, none remained there by late September, with 11 having returned to their home countries.

"The uncertainty and other conditions they faced in the Democratic Republic of Congo call into question whether these returns to countries of origin were voluntary," the group said.

Equatorial Guinea, which received 65 people, quickly sent at least two people to their home countries, HRW said.

Burundi announced late last month that it had agreed to take in migrants deported from the US.

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.