U.S. planning to deport migrants to Libya

The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the plans, but the news comes days after reports Trump was eyeing the North African nation, as well as other African countries including Benin, Angola, and Eswatini, as places to send deportees.

Earlier this week, Rwanda’s foreign minister confirmed the East African country was in talks with Washington about the same issue. All these countries have notorious human rights records.

A civil war broke out in Libya in 2011, and the country is now effectively divided into two parts, each governed by different factions. Eastern Libya is controlled by military strongman General Khalifa Haftar, while Western Libya is run by a UN-backed government.

As part of its crackdown, the Trump administration has been seeking to deport migrants without legal status to third countries. Several Latin American countries have already taken in deportees, including El Salvador and Panama.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told lawmakers on Tuesday that she signed new agreements with El Salvador, and Colombia during recent visits there.

The agreement with Colombia enables sharing of biometric information to identify people the Department of Homeland Security aims to remove from the U.S. A memo signed by the secretary in El Salvador allows for the sharing of fugitives’ criminal records.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters last month that the U.S. administration,
“are working with other countries to say, we want to send you some of the most despicable human beings…and the further away from America, the better, so they can’t come back across the borders.”

Tom Bowman and Ximena Bustillo contributed to this report.