US: Deportations to African Countries Not Their Own

(Washington, DC, October 8, 2026) – The Trump administration is sending hundreds of people who can’t be deported to their own countries­—­because they would be in danger—to African countries where they have no connections, Human Rights Watch said in a report issued today. Many have been left with no practical option but to return to their home countries regardless of the harm they face there.  
The 126-page report, “‘To Scare People’: US Expulsions of Third-Country Nationals to Countries in Africa,” documents that US authorities denied the more than 500 people transferred to third countries a meaningful chance to contest their removals or to articulate their fears of being removed to these countries. Some countries arbitrarily detained people they had accepted, and some have sent people onward to the risk of persecution or torture in their home countries, violating the principle in international law of nonrefoulement.