The Trump administration is moving forward with plans to deport a group of Iranian asylum-seekers and other migrants to the Central African Republic under a newly brokered third-country agreement, according to multiple reports.
The first removal flight under the deal could leave as soon as Thursday and is expected to carry about 20 people.
Reuters reported that those scheduled to be on the flight include migrants from Syria and Afghanistan, as well as one person from Turkey.
The administration has increasingly turned to third-country deportation agreements as a legal pathway for removing migrants who cannot be returned to their countries of origin.
Federal officials have already pursued a similar arrangement with the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Central African Republic is a landlocked nation bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan and South Sudan to the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo to the south, and Cameroon to the west.
Since gaining independence from France in 1960, the CAR has seen decades of political instability including six coups and weak state authority with armed insurgencies fuelimh violence and risk of mass atrocities against civilians.
President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, re-elected to a third term in December’s election, has relied on Russia for security assistance while also showing interest in partnering with Western countries to develop the country’s critical minerals sector.
Under the new US deal, hundreds of migrants could ultimately be sent to there which has triggered pushback from immigration defense lawyers.
Among those scheduled for the upcoming flight are two Iranian women who arrived in the US in November 2024 and secured “withholding of removal” from a US immigration judge.
According to their attorney, Emily Trostle, the two women face a risk of torture and persecution if forcibly returned to Iran. One of them is a baptized convert; the other is a democracy activist, Trostle said.
Both women were detained after arriving in the United States in November 2024, and filed asylum applications in the United States where they received protection in the form of a stay of deportation from an immigration judge, Trostle told the outlet.
The latest deal was reportedly finalized during a US delegation visit to the capital city of Bangui in May, Reuters said.
Initial details regarding the total number of migrants, specific nationalities, and the long-term timing of subsequent flights were not made available at that time.
Once in the CAR, the deportees are expected to be housed in apartments in Bangui and will not face immediate repatriation.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), which received $85 million in US funding this year, confirmed it will provide strictly voluntary, post-arrival humanitarian assistance to the migrants at the explicit request of the Central African government.
The agency noted it remains entirely uninvolved in the actual removals.
At least eight African nations, including Eswatini, the DRC, Ghana, and Sierra Leone, have taken in US deportees, usually in exchange for financial or logistical support.
The State Department and Trostle did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
