The administration of President Donald Trump has deported nearly 25,000 people to countries that are not their own, according to a report by Fantástico, the newsmagazine of Brazil's Globo TV network, broadcast on Sunday. The destinations range from democracies such as Costa Rica and Liberia to unstable or authoritarian regimes such as El Salvador, Eswatini, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinea. All of them receive millions of dollars from Washington to take the immigrants in.
Most of these deportees had applied for asylum in the United States, saying they faced violence or political persecution at home. Because U.S. courts often bar the government from sending them back to their countries of origin, it began routing them to third countries under paid agreements. Data from the project Third Country Deportation Watch compiled by Folha de S.Paulo show that Equatorial Guinea alone, which already holds dozens of immigrants from other African countries, has received six flights carrying at least 53 third-country immigrants since last year. Reuters and Al Jazeera reported in August that Venezuelans and Cubans were among those flown to Liberia, which was expected to receive up to 1,200 people.
For Brazil, the policy landed in August and exposed an information gap. The foreign ministry, known as the Itamaraty, said it received no advance notice in any of the cases of Brazilians sent to African countries. In the case of Pietro Graza de Lima, 57, from the state of Pernambuco, the ministry only learned on August 25 that he was in Equatorial Guinea, and has since been asking permission to provide consular assistance. On Wednesday, September 2, Brazil's ambassador to the country was told that he "is in good health, housed in a hotel determined by the authorities" and that a visit "will be facilitated in the coming days". Brazil takes in near-weekly flights carrying dozens of Brazilian deportees from the United States, but for these third-country removals the notification channel did not work.
A 16-hour flight to Liberia
Paola Santos, 21, from Minas Gerais, had cleaned construction sites in Massachusetts for five years when she was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the country's immigration police. She had entered the country irregularly through the Mexican border and says she held work authorization. After an enforcement operation, she spent one year and three months in detention, in jails across Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Texas and Louisiana, until she boarded a plane in late August to an unknown destination, shackled at her feet, wrists and waist. Only after a 16-hour flight did she learn where she was, when local immigration officers told her: "Welcome, you are in Liberia". When she pressed about the destination, an agent told her: "If you don't get off the bus of your own will, we will have to use force". The Itamaraty said it received no notification about her case, "neither from the states allegedly involved in the deportation, nor from the national or her family".
Pietro was put on a flight to Liberia on August 20, together with Cubans and Cameroonians, after a U.S. judge denied a temporary restraining order against his removal, according to Folha. On landing, he and a small group of immigrants refused to disembark. "We were left with bruises all over our bodies, they practically threw us onto the tarmac", he said. A Liberian representative said the country would not take the group; the plane took off again and landed in Equatorial Guinea, where the immigrants were removed and taken to a semi-abandoned hotel that, according to the Associated Press, receives only suspected Ebola cases and people deported by U.S. immigration. In the country, Fantástico reports, they are watched and not free to move around, with no date set for their return.
"Around 10 or 20 hooded police officers with heavy weapons were waiting for us. That was the worst moment of my life. We looked at each other and said: 'There is no point in resisting'."
A third Brazilian tries to avoid Africa
A third Brazilian is trying to escape the same fate. Alex Pereira Alves, who lives in Los Angeles, applied for asylum in the U.S. ten years ago, saying he faced persecution in Brazil for being gay. Summoned in April, he was fitted with an electronic monitoring device; on August 12 he was arrested five minutes after reporting to immigration authorities, according to his lawyer, Jane Oak. Held in Adelanto, California, he is asking to be deported to Brazil rather than Equatorial Guinea. "He thinks that, ten years later, Brazilian society has changed and he would feel safer", the lawyer said. The standoff maps the interests at play: Washington wants to remove people its courts will not let it send home, the receiving governments want the money, and Brazil wants, for now, to be notified and to be allowed to visit its nationals.