Congo to receive third-country deportees from US under new deal

Kinshasa: Congo will receive some migrants as part of a new deal under the Trump administration’s third-country program, its government said Sunday, the latest such African nation to receive migrants being deported from the US.

The deportees will start arriving in Congo this month, the Congolese Ministry of Communications said in a statement, without further details on the date or the number of deportees expected.

It described the arrangement as a “temporary” one that reflects Congo’s “commitment to human dignity and international solidarity.” It would come with zero costs to the government with the US covering the needed logistics, it said. The US has struck such third-country deportation deals with at least seven other African nations, many of them among countries hit the most by the Trump administration’s policies that have restricted trade, aid and migration.

US has spent at least $40 million to deport about 300 migrants to countries other than their own, according to a report released recently by the Democratic staff of the Senate FRC. Lawyers and activists have raised questions over the nature of the deals with countries in Africa and elsewhere. Several of the African nations that have signed such deals have notoriously repressive governments and poor human rights records — including Eswatini, South Sudan and Equatorial Guinea.

A key bone of contention in many such agreements is that they involve many migrants with protection orders from a US immigration judge not to be returned to their home countries over major safety concerns.agencies