Sierra Leone Foreign Minister Timothy Kabba speaks during a UN Security Council meeting on leadership for peace, on the sidelines of the 79th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 25, 2024. Image@ REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Freetown has quietly reversed course on a long-running standoff with Washington over deportations — and in doing so, has signed up to become a transit destination for hundreds of West African migrants expelled from the United States under the Trump administration’s third-country removal programme.
Sierra Leone’s Foreign Minister Timothy Kabba confirmed the deal on Friday, saying his country will accept up to 300 citizens of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) deported from the United States each year, capped at 25 per month. The first group — 25 nationals from Senegal, Ghana, Guinea and Nigeria — is due to land in Freetown on May 20.
“Sierra Leone signed a Third Country National Agreement with the U.S. to accept 300 ECOWAS citizens from the U.S. per year with a maximum of 25 a month,” Kabba said.
The pact adds Sierra Leone to a growing list of African states that have entered into third-country deportation arrangements with Washington, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Eswatini. Rights groups and legal experts have repeatedly challenged the legal basis for such transfers, arguing that sending migrants to countries where they hold no citizenship violates due process protections.
Those concerns are not without precedent. Deportees transferred to Ghana and Equatorial Guinea under similar arrangements were subsequently forced back to their home countries, in some cases despite holding U.S. court-ordered protections against removal to those very destinations. In one well-documented case, a Sierra Leonean woman who had lived in the United States for close to three decades was deported to Ghana, held at a hotel for nearly a week, then forcibly flown to Freetown — the country she had originally fled citing fears of political persecution.
Whether migrants sent to Sierra Leone under the new deal will be permitted to remain there, or face a similar fate, is unclear. Kabba offered no public assurances on the legal status or long-term protections available to the deportees after arrival. He also declined to say what Sierra Leone would receive in return for its cooperation.
“It’s part of our bilateral relationship with the U.S. to assist with its immigration policy,” he said.
The financial terms of such arrangements across the region remain opaque. A February report by Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee found that while the total cost of third-country removal programmes was unknown, more than $32 million had already been channelled directly to five participating countries — Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, El Salvador, Eswatini and Palau.
The agreement marks a notable shift for a country that once found itself on the receiving end of American immigration pressure. During Trump’s first term in 2017, Washington threatened to block tourist and business visas for Sierra Leonean foreign ministry and immigration officials in retaliation for Freetown’s refusal to accept the return of its own deported nationals. Less than a decade later, Sierra Leone is not only accepting its own returnees but agreeing to take in migrants from across the West African region.
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment on the new arrangement. The White House and State Department have previously maintained that all such deportations are carried out lawfully.
By: Andrews Kwesi Yeboah