Sierra Leone Receives US Deportees Amid Trump Immigration Crackdown

Freetown, Sierra Leone – Sierra Leone on Wednesday became the latest African nation to receive migrants deported from the United States as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

A plane carrying nine West African migrants landed at Lungi International Airport, outside the capital Freetown, on Wednesday morning.

Foreign Minister Timothy Musa Kabba told Reuters last week that Sierra Leone had agreed to accept up to 300 people expelled by the United States annually.

Kabba said the deportees must originally come from member states of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the region’s economic bloc.

The United States has already sent deportees to several other African countries, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana and South Sudan.

Dozens of migrants have been flown to third countries – nations where the deportees had not lived prior to arriving in the United States – since Trump took office in January 2025.

Mass deportation of illegal immigrants was a central plank of Trump’s reelection campaign.

The BBC witnessed the nine deportees arrive at Sierra Leone’s airport on a Boeing charter flight on Wednesday.

The group consisted of seven men and two women, all appearing forlorn. One deportee resisted leaving the plane and was physically removed by officials.

Officials told the BBC that five deportees are from Ghana, two from Guinea, and one each from Nigeria and Senegal.

Under ECOWAS agreements, citizens of member countries can stay in other member states for up to 90 days without a visa.

Kenvah Solutions, the private company housing the migrants, told the BBC the deportees would be allowed to stay at its facilities for two weeks before being sent to their home countries.

According to a minority report from the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Trump administration has “likely” spent more than $40 million (£30 million) on third-country deportations through January 2026, though the total cost remains “unknown.”

Sierra Leonean authorities have not disclosed what compensation they receive for accepting deportees.

Critics say deportations to third countries violate international human rights standards and place vulnerable migrants at risk.

In September, Human Rights Watch urged African nations to reject the “opaque deals,” calling them “designed to instrumentalise human suffering.”

Like Sierra Leone, Ghana said it would accept only deportees from ECOWAS countries.

“We agreed with [the US] that West African nationals were acceptable,” Ghanaian President John Mahama said in September.

“All our fellow West African nationals don’t need visas to come to our country.”

Deportees sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan and Eswatini have come from farther afield, including Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and Vietnam.

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