By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Receiving deported migrants formed a major agenda during the meeting of African leaders with the US President Donald Trump in Washington, Reuters quoted two sources familiar with the matter as saying.
The US leader on Wednesday met with the Presidents of Liberia, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Gabon at the White House where the discussion was presented, US and Liberian officials who pleaded anonymity stated.
It is not immediately clear if any of the countries had agreed to the plan as no official information has been released by both the White House and the visiting nations.
Trump has since January, when he returned to power, been pressing to speed up deportations, including by sending migrants to third countries when there are problems or delays over sending them to their countries of origin.
On Saturday, at least eight migrants from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Sudan and Vietnam were sent to South Sudan, their lawyers said after they lost a legal battle to stop their transfer.
According to the US official, Wednesday’s meeting at the White House was organised largely to talk about the deportation plan.
Liberia’s government was “preparing to accommodate” an effort to house migrants in its capital Monrovia, the US official added.
The Liberian official confirmed that the deportation plan was a focus of Wednesday’s meeting, but did not say whether the West African nation’s leader, Joseph Boakai, had agreed to it.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that an internal State Department document sent to the African governments before the meeting called on them to agree to the “dignified, safe, and timely transfer from the United States” of third country nationals.
Under the proposed plan, the governments would agree not to send the migrants “to their home country or country of former habitual residence until a final decision has been made” on their US asylum bids, according to the report.
In public comments at Wednesday’s meeting, Trump told the five leaders he was shifting the US approach to Africa from aid to trade, and that the United States was a better partner than China.
“I hope we can bring down the high rates of people overstaying visas, and also make progress on the safe third country agreements,” Trump added.
