Africa as dumping ground for migrants 

In April the Democratic Republic of Congo began receiving third-country nationals deported from the United States. It is one of many African countries receiving these deportees. The Trump administration has forcibly removed migrants and asylum seekers without informing them of their destination. Mass deportation is attempted through repatriation, and when this is not an option because detainees refuse to be repatriated or their country of origin refuse to receive them, “Asylum Cooperative Agreements” or “third-country” agreements have become the administration’s welcome alternative. For Trump and his band of bigots, no effort can be spared in their accomplishing mass deportation.

The threat of deportation to “third countries” is also used to leverage asylum seekers into relinquishing their rights and leaving the U.S. “voluntarily.” Even when detainees have protective court orders, immigration officials have been non-compliant. The Associated Press documented 250 cases of noncompliance.

The 1951 Refugees Act and the United Nations Convention Against Torture oblige countries to take into consideration the prospect of ill treatment of refugees at the hands of the state receiving them. The protection applies regardless of legal status. It is illegal to send a detainee to a country where they may face human rights abuses. But Trump’s administration is clearly indifferent to legality. Its approach has been to deny individuals the right to due process. They negotiate secret agreements and whisk detainees away on secret flights.

A Senate foreign relations committee found that the Trump administration had sent over $32 million to African countries. These pacts between countries are also known as “safe third-country agreements.” Yet there is nothing “safe” about the countries in question. Eswatini continues to hold 19 men in unlawful detention after they arrived from the U.S. South Sudan is plagued by war and famine, and violence against civilians is rampant. There is also the threat of the war in Sudan encroaching from the north. U.S. officials approached the South Sudanese government to accept eight deportees, with only one originally from South Sudan. In return, the government asked the U.S. to remove visa restrictions and lift sanctions on South Sudanese nationals, according to Politico. The U.S. had revoked visas in April of 2025 after demanding the country accept return of their citizens.

Cameroon received 17 men and women from other African countries. The government detained the 17 and pressured them to return to their native countries. While some of the detainees were ineligible for asylum in the U.S., they were under an order of protection from the courts. The U.S. deported West Africans to Ghana, who later were left stranded in Togo without documentation. The Trump administrations is not particular where they are sent, so long as they no longer reside in the United States.

The administration has resorted to bribery. Eswatini has accepted $5 million to accept deportees, even those designated as “criminals and terrorists.” Equatorial Guinea received $7 million. The Uganda Legal Society is acting on behalf of detainees who have been reduced to “little more than chattel, for the benefit of unnamed interests, on either side of the Atlantic” (“Externalizing Asylum”). The agreement between Uganda and the U.S. does not disclose whether there was any monetary compensation.

Trump’s administration made Rwanda a targeted destination (or dumping ground) for mass deportation. The country agreed to accept 250 deportees. Despite the claims of the previous British government, Rwanda by most accounts is not a safe country. In response to an inquiry regarding the killing of refugees, a Rwandan official stated, “It might have happened, so what?” (Cristiano d’ Orsi, externalizingasylum.info). Security forces act with impunity and opposition forces are crushed. Besides deaths in custody there are forced disappearances and threats to Rwandans living abroad. Yet, Trump’s commitment to the largest mass deportation in U.S. history outweighs concerns for human rights. All deference to civil and human rights are cast aside in accomplishing the administration’s ethnic and racial cleansing.

Like Trump, the Zionist project of ethnic cleansing proceeds apace as well. Netanyahu’s government has proffered multiple African nations as a disposal point for the population of Gaza. Last year, Israel recognized the breakaway state of Somaliland. The motivation was twofold: establishing a foothold in east Africa and resettling Palestinians. Israel also floated the idea of sending the surviving population to Egypt and Sudan.

African is now a dumping site for the refugees of wars, racial and ethnic persecution, climate change, and famine. Conditions in much of the world are contributing to an exodus of biblical proportions worldwide. Meanwhile, rival imperialists continue to exploit Africa’s resources. The wealthy countries are not the solution but the source of the problem.

Where does Africa fit within the world economy? Where it has always been, as a supplier of raw materials. It remains underdeveloped and reliant on extractive industry.

The European and U.S. relationship to the continent is proof of the barbaric nature of capitalism. After hundreds of years of hunting and kidnapping its people and plundering its resources, they now use Africa as a receptacle for the stateless.

Containing the African working class through exploitation, oppression, and the further cultivation of a corrupt bureaucracy is the modus operandi of imperialism. The workers and oppressed of Africa must reject these dehumanizing imperialist deportation treaties and organize against the comprador governments that accept them. Workers of the world must demand an end to the racist and barbaric immigration policies on both sides of the Atlantic.

First published here by Workers’ Voice

Photo: Federal agents drag away a man after he went to his immigration hearing in New York City. (Spencer Platt / AFP / Getty Images)