Americans Come Up with Idea to Deport Migrants to War-Torn Country

Reuters cited three unnamed U.S. officials as saying the deportations could take place this week. Two of them said the immigrants, whose nationalities are unknown, could be flown to the North African country as early as Wednesday, but added that plans could change. The New York Times also cited a U.S. official as confirming the deportation plans.

A federal judge has reportedly ruled in favor of immigrant rights advocates who asked him to block any deportation of immigrants to Libya. District Court Judge Brian Murphy agreed with the lawyers that an earlier injunction he had issued already barred such flights.

“If there is any doubt – and the Court does not see any – then the allegedly inevitable removal,” Murphy explained, “would clearly violate the ruling of this Court.”

It remains unclear what Libya will get in return for accepting the deportees, The Guardian stresses. In a rare show of unity, Libya's rival governments responded to the news reports by declaring that they would refuse to accept any deportees from the United States.

Human rights groups have condemned the plans, citing the country's poor human rights record and the abuse of detainees.

“Libya has a long history of trafficking, torture, and ransoming migrants. The country is in the midst of a civil war. It is not a safe place to send anyone,” wrote Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn).

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote on the platform alongside a photo of a Libyan detention center: “Don’t look away. This is what Libya’s immigration detention facilities look like. This is what Trump is doing.” Reichlin-Melnick added that human rights groups have called the facilities a “hellscape” where “beatings are common and sexual violence is endemic. There are reports of human trafficking and even slavery.”

Claudia Lodesani, head of programmes at Doctors Without Borders (MSF), said the organisation was “very concerned” about the potential impact of such a plan, saying media and human rights reports showed that “Libya is not a safe country for migrants”.

Lodesani cites a 2023 United Nations report that documented “widespread practices of arbitrary detention, torture, rape and slavery, and concluded that there are grounds to believe that a wide range of crimes against humanity have been committed against migrants in Libya.”

The reports of planned deportations to Libya come as the Trump administration expands its efforts to negotiate the deportation of American migrants to third countries, including Angola, Benin, Eswatini, Moldova and Rwanda. That's on top of at least 238 Venezuelan immigrants already deported to a prison in El Salvador.

Libya is a major transit point for asylum seekers in Europe, The Guardian reports. For years, human rights groups have documented how migrants trapped there find themselves at the mercy of militants and smugglers. Tens of thousands of people from sub-Saharan Africa are held indefinitely in overcrowded detention centres, where they are subjected to abuse and torture.

In its annual human rights report released last year, the US State Department criticised “harsh and life-threatening prison conditions in Libya” and “arbitrary arrests or detentions,” citing that migrants, including children, “have no access to immigration courts or due process.”

The news drew condemnation from aid agencies and NGOs operating in the central Mediterranean, which have long warned of the dire conditions facing asylum seekers in Libya. They also accused European governments of complicity in the treatment by cooperating with Libya to intercept migrants.

"For 10 years, since our foundation as a search and rescue organization, we have consistently emphasized that Libya is not a safe place for migrants and refugees," said Mirka Schäfer, a political expert at the German search and rescue organization. "Testimonies from survivors include refugees with signs of torture on their bodies, gunshot wounds, pain caused by beatings, physical and psychological trauma during transport, in detention camps in Libya or fleeing Libya across the Mediterranean."

Luca Casarini, the Italian founder of the NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans, said Trump's announced move was "an endorsement of the horror that has characterized his administration's policies from the beginning."

"Libya is one of the most hellish places on Earth, where mafias and smugglers operate with the help of the European Union. But Trump goes even further. The American president claims to be involved in this horror, deporting people to the hell that is Libya, flaunting his power. This is a step that is leading our civilization to the abyss."

Libya's national unity government said on Wednesday it rejected its territory being used as a destination for deporting migrants without its knowledge or consent. It added that it had not coordinated with the United States on accepting migrants.

Trump, who made immigration a top issue during his campaign, has taken aggressive enforcement actions since taking office, increasing troop levels on the southern border and vowing to deport millions of illegal immigrants from the United States.

As of Monday, the Trump administration had deported 152,000 people, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The Trump administration has tried to encourage migrants to leave voluntarily by threatening heavy fines, trying to strip them of their legal status, and sending them to notorious prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and El Salvador.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that the US was not satisfied with sending migrants only to El Salvador and hinted that Washington was seeking to expand the number of countries to which it could deport people.

“We’re working with other countries to say, ‘We want to send you the most despicable people; will you do that as a favor to us?’” Rubio said at a White House Cabinet meeting last Wednesday. “And the farther away from America, the better.”

A fourth U.S. official said the administration had been considering for weeks a number of countries where it could send migrants, including Libya.

As The Guardian notes, on April 19, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelans it accused of being gang members. The Trump administration, which cited a rarely used wartime law, urged the justices to overturn or narrow their decision.