Sierra Leone accepts deportees from US as Trump crackdown continues

Sierra Leone has become the latest African nation to receive deported migrants from the United States, as the Trump administration presses forward with its crackdown on illegal immigration.

A chartered Boeing flight carrying nine West African migrants landed at Freetown International Airport on Wednesday morning. Witnesses, including the BBC, described the group—seven men and two women—as appearing forlorn, with one deportee initially resisting before being physically removed from the aircraft.

The deportees included five citizens of Ghana, two from Guinea, and one each from Nigeria and Senegal, according to local officials.

Last week, Sierra Leone’s Foreign Minister Timothy Musa Kabba told Reuters that his government had agreed to accept up to 300 deported individuals per year. However, he stressed that all arrivals must originally come from member states of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the region’s political and economic bloc.

Under ECOWAS agreements, citizens of one member country may stay elsewhere in the bloc for up to 90 days. But Kenvah Solutions, the private company housing the migrants in Sierra Leone, told the BBC they would be permitted to stay at its facilities for just two weeks before being sent to their home countries.

US Deportations to Third Countries Rise

The Trump administration, which made mass deportation of illegal migrants a cornerstone of its reelection campaign, has now sent deportees to several African nations, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, and South Sudan. Since January 2026, dozens of migrants have been flown to third countries—nations where they had never resided before arriving in the US.

According to a minority report from the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the administration has “likely” spent more than $40 million (£30 million) on third-country deportations as of January 2026, though the total cost remains unknown. Sierra Leonean authorities have not disclosed what, if anything, they have received in return for accepting the deportees.

Human Rights Concerns

Critics warn that deportations to third countries violate international human rights standards and put vulnerable migrants at risk. In September 2025, Human Rights Watch urged African nations to reject what it called “opaque deals” designed to “instrumentalise human suffering.”

Like Sierra Leone, Ghana has said it will accept only deportees who are ECOWAS nationals. “We agreed with [the US] that West African nationals were acceptable,” Ghanaian President John Mahama said in September. “All our fellow West African nationals don’t need visas to come to our country.”

By contrast, deportees sent to DR Congo, South Sudan, and Eswatini have originated from farther afield, including Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, and Vietnam.