Documentation. This article reports the text of a published international agreement, statements by the Government of Liberia and members of its Legislature, provisions of Liberian law, and reporting by identified news organisations. Liberian law is a matter for Liberian courts, which have not been asked.
The agreement under which people are flown from the United States to Liberia is not secret. It was published by the United States Department of State in March 2026, six months after it came into force. The Liberian public and the Liberian Legislature learned of it five months after that, when the first aircraft was already due. It contains no limit on numbers, no time limit, no provision on detention, no provision on lawyers, and no monitoring of any kind. It does contain one precondition, and nobody has produced evidence that the precondition was met.
What was signed, and when
The instrument is an exchange of diplomatic notes at Monrovia, published in the Treaties and Other International Acts Series as TIAS 25-910 under the title Migration and Refugees: Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Liberia to Cooperate in the Examination of Protection Claims.
The United States note is numbered 2025 129 EXEC and is dated 4 September 2025. The reply from the Liberian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is Note Verbale RL/MFA/2-1/S010030/’25, dated 10 September 2025. The agreement entered into force on the date of that reply.
No individual is named anywhere in it. The United States side is “The Embassy, on behalf of the Government of the United States of America”. The Liberian side is “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Liberia”. No ambassador, no minister, no secretary. Any account that names a signatory is going beyond the document.
Its stated purpose:
TIAS 25-910. “Under this Agreement, the Parties seek to ensure the dignified, safe, and timely transfer from the United States to Liberia of third-country nationals present in the United States who may seek protection against return to their home country or country of former habitual residence.”
Each side reserves an absolute discretion:
TIAS 25-910. “The Government of the United States of America shall in its complete discretion propose to the Government of the Republic of Liberia the transfer of such third-country nationals, and the Government of the Republic of Liberia shall in its complete discretion consider accepting or declining such a proposal in whole or in part.”
It names the Refugee Convention of 1951, its Protocol of 1967 and the Convention against Torture, and states that both Parties will act in accordance with their obligations under them. Its single undertaking against return reads in full:
TIAS 25-910. “The Government of the Republic of Liberia agrees not to return any person transferred to Liberia by the Government of the United States of America to their home country or country of former habitual residence until a final decision has been made regarding any pending protection claims.”
Unaccompanied minors are excluded. Either Party may terminate or suspend at any time by written notice. And on money the agreement says the opposite of what might be expected: “Nothing set forth in this Agreement shall be interpreted in such a way that commits the disbursement or allocation of funds by the Parties.”
What the agreement does not contain
The Coalition has read the published text. It contains no cap on numbers. It contains no term of months or years. It contains no provision about access to a lawyer, no provision about detention, housing or conditions, no monitoring or reporting mechanism, and no provision about onward removal to some further country. The only return it forbids is return to a person’s own country, and only until a pending protection claim has been decided.
The figure of one thousand two hundred people over twelve months, which has been reported everywhere, appears nowhere in the agreement. It comes from the Liberian Government’s own announcement of 18 August 2026. The agreement itself sets no number at all.
The precondition
The agreement makes one thing a condition of any transfer taking place:
TIAS 25-910. “The Parties shall develop operating procedures to assist with the implementation of this Agreement… The operating procedures shall be signed by both Parties before any transfers under the Agreement may begin.”
Transfers began on 20 August 2026. The Coalition has found no published operating procedures, no reference to them in any statement by either government, and no reporting confirming that they exist or were signed. This is a question with a definite answer that somebody holds, and as far as the Coalition can establish nobody has asked it.
The sequence of disclosure
In July 2025, before the notes were exchanged, the Liberian Presidential Press Secretary said that “The White House has made no such request to the Government of Liberia.” That statement predates the agreement and is not on its face inaccurate.
The notes were exchanged on 4 and 10 September 2025. The Department of State published the text in March 2026. The Government of Liberia announced the arrangement to Liberians on 18 August 2026, two days before the first aircraft landed. Between 10 September 2025 and 18 August 2026 the Coalition has found no Liberian statement acknowledging that the agreement existed, including in the five months after the American Government had published it.
The announcement came from the Ministry of Information, Culture Affairs and Tourism. It stated that those being brought to Liberia “are not criminals and are not being prosecuted in any manner under United States or Liberian law”, that they would be free to leave the country, and that those wishing to remain could apply for asylum under Liberian law. On the question of payment it was categorical:
Ministry of Information, Culture Affairs and Tourism, 18 August 2026. “The transfer of persons to Liberia is not a transaction with a quid pro quo. Liberia has not demanded or received any compensation or promise of reward.”
The Coalition has found no public statement by the President of Liberia on the arrangement. The Government has spoken through ministries.
Article 57
The Constitution of Liberia of 1986 provides at Article 57:
Constitution of Liberia, Article 57. “The President shall have the power to conduct the foreign affairs of the Republic and in that connection he is empowered to conclude treaties, conventions and similar international agreements with the concurrence of a majority of each House of the Legislature.”
Article 34(f) gives the Legislature power to approve treaties, conventions and other international agreements negotiated or signed on behalf of the Republic.
The agreement was concluded by an exchange of notes between an embassy and a ministry. No concurrence of either House was sought, and the Legislature was not informed. Whether an exchange of notes is a “similar international agreement” within Article 57 is a question of Liberian constitutional law. No Liberian court has been asked it.
Two legislators have raised it publicly. Senator Samuel Kogar of Nimba County, quoted by Al Jazeera:
Senator Samuel Kogar. “Was this arrangement brought before both Houses of the Legislature and approved by the required majority?”
Senator Samuel Kogar. “This is not a small issue. We are talking about our sovereignty, our laws, our national security.”
Representative Anthony F. Williams, in the same report:
Representative Anthony F. Williams. “No agreement that borders on the national security of this country, the sovereignty of the country, can just be entered into by the executive branch alone.”
The Liberian Legislature was on break when the first aircraft landed and returns in October 2026. As at the date of this article the Coalition has found no committee hearing, no resolution, no summons and no floor debate. It has found no petition before the Supreme Court of Liberia or any other Liberian court, and no published position from the Liberian National Bar Association.
Liberia has a refugee law, with a clock and a court
This is the part of the record that the Coalition considers least examined.
Liberia’s Refugee Act of 1993 establishes the Liberia Refugee, Repatriation and Resettlement Commission, chaired by the Minister of Internal Affairs. It adopts both the definition in the 1951 Convention and the wider definition in the 1969 Convention of the Organisation of African Unity, which covers people compelled to leave by external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order.
It sets out a procedure. Applications are routed through the Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to the Executive Director of the Commission. An Asylum Committee must decide within thirty days. An appeal lies to an Appeal Committee within fourteen days, and from there to the Supreme Court of Liberia within twenty-one days. Immigration proceedings against a person who entered unlawfully are suspended while a claim is pending. Section 13(1) provides that no person shall be refused entry, expelled, extradited or returned from Liberia to any country where that would expose them to persecution or threats to life on protected grounds.
That is a real procedure with a statutory timetable and a route to the highest court in the country. The Coalition has found no report that any of the people transferred on 20 August has been referred to the Commission, has lodged a claim through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or has been issued any document.
The Liberian Government has described them as guests of the Republic. The Coalition has found no instrument of Liberian law establishing such a status.
Where the fifteen are
About twenty people were aboard the aircraft that landed at Roberts International Airport on 20 August 2026. Fifteen disembarked. They walked down the steps, boarded a bus and were driven away under official supervision. Journalists at the airport were not allowed to speak to them.
CBS News reported from Liberia on 15 September 2026 that the group is housed in a three-storey hotel in a remote coastal area. They are not detained and are technically free to leave, but have been advised against going far. The International Organization for Migration has been providing basic necessities. Several told CBS they are considering returning to their own countries or hoping that some other country will take them. One of the fifteen is the young Brazilian woman whose own habeas corpus petition was still undecided in a federal court in Texas when she was flown to West Africa, and whose case the Coalition has recorded in She filed her own habeas petition from detention.
The Coalition has found no confirmation that any of the fifteen has met a lawyer. A lawyer in Monrovia who began receiving calls from families in the United States told reporters that he could tell them very little, and put the difficulty this way:
Samwar Fallah, lawyer, Monrovia. “You cannot relocate a citizen from one country to another without clear information as to why that person has been relocated.”
There has been no second flight. As at 15 September 2026, nearly four weeks after the first, Liberia had received one group under an arrangement reported to contemplate one thousand two hundred people.
Money
Liberia denies receiving anything, and the agreement expressly disclaims any commitment of funds. The Coalition records what else is on the record and does not join the facts together, because no government has.
Reuters has reported that the United States awarded Liberia five million dollars this year for migration management activities. The Coalition has not located the underlying award record.
On 9 December 2025, three months after the agreement came into force, the United States and Liberia signed a five year bilateral health cooperation memorandum of understanding worth one hundred and twenty-four million dollars. Both governments announced it. Neither has connected it to the transfers.
A minority report of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations of 17 February 2026 recorded direct payments of more than thirty-two million dollars to five countries in connection with these arrangements: Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, El Salvador, Eswatini and Palau. Liberia is not on that list.
The Coalition notes that Amnesty International has linked the health funding to the transfers across Liberia, Rwanda and Uganda. That is Amnesty’s characterisation and not a finding of any government or court.
The African Commission has addressed the practice, without naming Liberia
On 30 October 2025, seven weeks after the notes were exchanged, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights adopted a resolution on the externalisation of migration governance and the transfer of migrants to Africa. It states that African States “must not conclude or maintain migration partnerships when they know, or ought reasonably to know, that such agreements entail a real risk of serious human rights violations”, and calls on States to publish such agreements. It names the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom. It does not name Liberia.
Complaints have been brought before African regional bodies concerning Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea and Ghana. None has been brought concerning Liberia. The Coalition records those proceedings in Fourteen people won protection in American courts.
What is not established
Whether the operating procedures required before any transfer exist, or were signed, or by whom. Whether any of the fifteen holds a protection order from an American immigration judge against return to their own country; the Liberian Government has not said, and neither has the American one. What legal status, if any, the fifteen hold under Liberian law. Whether any of them has met a lawyer. The name and location of the hotel, and who pays for it. Whether any causal connection exists between the five million dollars, the one hundred and twenty-four million dollar health memorandum, and the transfers. Where the people who refused to disembark on 20 August now are, beyond the fact that they were taken to Equatorial Guinea.
The Coalition also records that it has not obtained the text of Liberia’s Aliens and Nationality Law on the admission of non-nationals, which may bear on all of this.
Sources
- United States Department of State, Migration and Refugees: Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Liberia to Cooperate in the Examination of Protection Claims, TIAS 25-910, notes exchanged at Monrovia 4 and 10 September 2025, entered into force 10 September 2025. Published at state.gov and independently by the Government Publishing Office at govinfo.gov.
- Ministry of Information, Culture Affairs and Tourism of the Republic of Liberia, Liberia Announces Humanitarian Arrangement with the United States, 18 August 2026.
- Constitution of the Republic of Liberia, 1986, Articles 34(f) and 57.
- Refugee Act of Liberia, 1993, as published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
- Not a small issue: people deported by US to Liberia face uncertain future, Al Jazeera, 22 August 2026, for the statements of Senator Kogar and Representative Williams.
- Camilo Montoya-Galvez, Latin American migrants deported by ICE to West Africa describe being stranded on the other side of the world, CBS News, 15 September 2026, reported from Liberia.
- United States Department of State and Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Liberia, announcements of the bilateral health cooperation memorandum of understanding, 9 December 2025.
- Minority staff of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, At What Cost: Inside the Trump Administration’s Secret Deportation Deals, 17 February 2026.
- African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, ACHPR/Res.645 (LXXXV) 2025, 30 October 2025.
The Coalition does not publish identifying numbers, detention file references or other identifiers belonging to people named in its reports, including where those identifiers appear in a public court file. Liberia and Equatorial Guinea both carry an Alert on this site. If someone in your family was on this flight, the route for finding a person and the legal aid index are on the Resources page. The Coalition records what courts, United Nations bodies, regional human rights bodies, government oversight agencies and identified news organisations have found, and identifies which of them made each finding. It does not advise on any individual case.