Nine migrants from four West African countries landed in Freetown on Wednesday under a controversial Trump administration deal backed by a $1.5 million American grant with fifteen more expected to follow.
Nine migrants deported from the United States touched down in Freetown on Wednesday morning, making Sierra Leone the latest African country drawn into the Trump administration’s expanding and heavily criticised policy of sending migrants to nations that are not their home countries.
Five of the arrivals are Ghanaian nationals, two are from Guinea, one is from Senegal, and one is from Nigeria none of them Sierra Leonean citizens. The group represents the first instalment of a larger cohort: a total of 24 deportees had been expected, with the remaining 15 set to follow at a later date.
The lower-than-expected number arriving on the first flight is no accident. Immigration lawyer Alma David, of the US-based Novo Legal Group, said the shortfall may be explained by last-minute court interventions. According to court documents seen by the Associated Press, a US federal judge halted the deportation of at least one woman bound for Sierra Leone after the government failed to allow her to seek protection under the Convention Against Torture, as required by law.
Sierra Leone’s Foreign Minister Timothy Kabba told local media that the government has agreed to temporarily receive migrants deported by the Trump administration, specifying that the country will only accept West African nationals. The agreement, he said, is supported by a $1.5 million grant from the US government.
The Ministry of Information confirmed that a private contractor, Kenvah Solutions, has been engaged to manage the deportees’ housing, food and healthcare. No timeline has been given for how long the nine individuals will remain in the country, nor have the terms under which they may eventually be repatriated to their countries of origin been made public.
The framing of the arrangement as temporary and regionally conscious Sierra Leone accepting only fellow West Africans echoes the language used by Ghana when it became one of the first countries in the subregion to enter such a deal. Ghana’s Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said his country had accepted deportees “purely on humanitarian principle” and because they were fellow West Africans, suggesting Ghana stepped in after several other nations in the region had declined.
Wednesday’s arrivals in Freetown are not an isolated event. They are part of a systematic campaign by the administration of US President Donald Trump to redistribute deportees many of whom have served criminal sentences on American soil to third countries across Africa and beyond.
The United States has sent third-country deportees to African countries including Ghana, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Eswatini, drawing criticism from legal experts and rights groups over the legal basis for the transfers and the treatment of deportees sent to countries where they are not nationals.
In Eswatini, where the Trump administration paid the small southern African kingdom $5.1 million to receive deportees, human rights lawyers mounted a legal challenge but the high court dismissed their case, though an appeal is pending. Despite having served their sentences for crimes on US soil, some deportees remain held in Eswatini’s prisons.
The Democratic Republic of Congo entered a similar arrangement in April, describing it as a “temporary” one reflecting Congo’s “commitment to human dignity and international solidarity.” As with other deals, the US agreed to bear the full cost of deportations with no expense to the Congolese government. Critics noted the timing coincided with Washington’s efforts to secure access to Congolese critical minerals.
The deals have raised persistent questions about respect for the migrants’ rights. Advocates point out that individuals being transferred to third countries had no connection to those destinations, were not citizens of them, and in many cases had no opportunity to legally challenge their removal before being placed on flights often in the middle of the night. Court documents from earlier deportations show migrants were awoken in the early hours and not informed of their destination until well into the flight on a US military cargo plane. Some had no ties to the receiving country and had not designated it as a potential country of removal.
As of Wednesday evening, Sierra Leone’s government had not addressed these concerns publicly, nor had it clarified what legal recourse, if any, the nine individuals now in Freetown have available to them.
The fifteen remaining deportees are expected to follow in a subsequent transfer. Whether Sierra Leone will be asked to receive further groups beyond this initial cohort of 24 has not been confirmed. The Ministry of Information has not responded to questions about whether a formal agreement has been signed, what its duration covers, or what conditions must be met before deportees are returned to their countries of origin.
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What is clear is that Freetown has now joined a growing list of African capitals entangled in an immigration enforcement strategy shaped entirely in Washington one that has enriched a handful of private contractors, tested the limits of international refugee law, and left thousands of migrants in legal limbo, far from home, in countries that are not their own.
