The Trump administration is preparing to deport nearly two dozen people to the Central African Republic on Thursday, including at least two Iranian women who had sought refuge in the United States, according to lawyers and a government official.
The flight, which is also expected to include migrants from Afghanistan and Syria, would mark the first such deportation to the Central African Republic, a deeply impoverished country that has been plagued by conflict. The country is so dangerous that the U.S. State Department states on its website, “do not travel for any reason.”
At least some of the migrants have received court orders in the United States prohibiting their deportation to their home countries because of the threat of persecution or torture, their lawyers said. Migrants face a higher burden of proof to win this “withholding of removal” status than they do to qualify for asylum.
The Trump administration is working to find ways to deport people despite these court orders. The government is cutting deals with other countries willing to take them. The U.S. has sought or signed agreements with dozens of countries, including Ghana, Equatorial Guinea and Eswatini.
The Iranian women scheduled to be on Thursday’s flight have no criminal record and have been granted court protection against deportation to Iran, said Sahar Jalili Pawelski, one of their immigration lawyers. The precise circumstances of their cases were not immediately clear, but many Iranians who hold this protection fear persecution over their political beliefs or religious identity.
The women were in “serious disbelief” when they realized they were scheduled to be sent to the Central African Republic, said Ali Rahmana of the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, who recently met with them.
The Department of Homeland Security said it would not confirm future deportations for security reasons. The planned deportations were confirmed by a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans were not public. A senior immigration official in the Central African Republic said he had no knowledge of any final agreement.
The migrants have no ties to the country, and it is unclear where they will live or whether they could ultimately be sent back to Iran. The U.S. government has documented significant human rights abuses in the Central African Republic, including unlawful killings, torture and arbitrary arrest and detention.
“It’s one of the hardest places in the world to live, and the idea that it would be considered a safe third country is absurd,” said Anjli Parrin, director of the Global Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School.
The existence of a deportation deal with the Central African Republic was earlier reported by Reuters.
Ms. Parrin, who has worked extensively in the country, said it has no functioning health care system and that fears of violence are constant despite a tentative peace agreement between armed groups and the state.
Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise to curtail immigration, and the White House is looking to step up deportations to third countries as a way to make good on that pledge. The deportation of Iranians would be another example of that policy extending to groups that had previously been seen as U.S. allies or aligned with its values.
The administration had been in talks with the Democratic Republic of Congo to deport more than 1,000 Afghans who had aided the U.S. war effort in their country, rather than allowing them to immigrate to the U.S. as planned. Negotiations stalled after a wave of public criticism, leaving the administration to seek new alternatives.
Margaret Stock, an Alaska-based immigration attorney and a member of the legal team for an elderly Syrian man who was told he would be on the flight to the Central African Republic, said he has scars all over his body from being tortured in his home country. He feared returning to Syria because he is a Sufi Muslim, she said, and a U.S. immigration judge agreed that those fears were credible.
The man, she added, suffers from diabetes — a grave risk in the Central African Republic, where medical care, even for routine ailments, is extremely limited.
“He’s not going to be able to access his medication, and he’s going to die,” Stock said. “And they know he’s going to die if they send him there.”
Ms. Stock said the man, who she said has no criminal record, had been released from immigration detention, but was later taken into custody again at a traffic stop.
