News & Reports
Reports and analysis on torture prevention, OPCAT ratifications, UN treaty body sessions, and human rights documentation, sourced from OHCHR, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Coalition monitoring work.
Liberia Agreed in September 2025. Liberians Were Told in August 2026.
The agreement under which people are flown from the United States to Liberia was published by the Department of State in March 2026 and announced to Liberians in August. It sets no limit on numbers, provides nothing about lawyers, detention or monitoring, and makes signed operating procedures a condition of any transfer. No such procedures have been produced.
Fourteen People Won Protection in American Courts. Now They Are Before the African Commission.
On 5 June 2026 five organisations filed a complaint against Equatorial Guinea at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, for fourteen people sent there from the United States. Every one of them had been granted protection by an American immigration judge. Three months on, the Commission has announced nothing.
The Plane Landed in Monrovia at 12:45. By Evening It Was in Malabo.
Six people refused to get off a United States removal flight in Liberia, saying it was not their country and that they would face danger there. They were told they would be flown back to the United States. The same aircraft landed that evening in Equatorial Guinea.
She Filed Her Own Habeas Petition From Detention. Two Days After Her Reply Was Docketed, She Was Flown to Liberia.
Paola Ferreira Dos Santos filed her own petition for habeas corpus from immigration detention in Texas in March. A judge ordered the government to state the status of her removal proceedings. Her reply was entered on the docket on 17 August. On 19 August she was flown to Liberia. The petition has never been decided.
Twenty Were Flown to Liberia on 20 August. Five Were Put Back on the Plane.
Roughly twenty people landed at Monrovia on 20 August. Five refused to leave the aircraft and, Reuters reported, were taken on to Equatorial Guinea. Most of the fifteen who remained had already won an order from an American court forbidding their return to their own countries.
The Rules Say the Country Must Be Named. Two Courts Said So in 1998 and 1999.
Two provisions of the removal regulations require the immigration judge to identify the alternative countries on the record, and to tell a person who fears one of them that he may apply for protection against being sent there. Courts of appeals said the same in 1998 and 1999. In O.C.G.'s hearing no alternative country was identified, and when he raised Mexico himself he was told it could not happen.
A Man With Protection From Guatemala Was Put on a Bus to Mexico. Mexico Sent Him Back to Guatemala.
An immigration judge found he would more likely than not suffer serious harm in Guatemala. Two days later he was removed to Mexico without notice, and Mexico sent him to Guatemala. A federal judge ordered the government to bring him back, and the court has since recorded that the government did.
Liberia Agreed to Take 1,200 People Who Are Not Liberian. The Times Reported a Five Million Dollar Payment.
Liberia announced it would accept up to 1,200 people removed from the United States, none of them Liberian, and called the decision entirely humanitarian. Two days later The New York Times reported a five million dollar payment.
CGTN America on the Expansion of Third-Country Removals
A Chinese state broadcaster covering removals from the United States to Africa. Carried as commentary, labelled as state media, and relied on for nothing.
Sent to a Country at War, on a Three-Month Visa
CNN International reached the people the United States transferred to the Central African Republic. Most of them hold court orders from American judges saying they cannot be sent home.