Monrovia, Liberia – Samwar Fallah began receiving calls this week from people in the United States seeking information about 20 relatives sent to Liberia, a country none of them is a citizen of. The families asked the Monrovia-based lawyer to find out where their relatives were taken and what would happen to them. He could not tell them much.
He knows the group landed at Roberts International Airport near capital Monrovia on Thursday and was driven away in a bus by Liberian officials. He does not know where they were taken, whether they are free to leave, or what legal status they now hold. Fallah avoids calling them deportees because the government has not defined their status under Liberian law.
The Liberian government announced the move on Tuesday, two days before the flight. Politicians say they were not consulted. Fallah, assisting the families without charge alongside two US immigration lawyers, said they want to know whether their relatives may settle in Liberia, choose where they can go, or eventually return to the US.
The arrangement involves third-country deportation: sending people to a country other than their country of citizenship. It has raised questions about executive power, sovereignty and the rights of those transferred. The government said the deportees have not been detained and described the arrangement with the US as humanitarian.
Information Minister Jerolinmek Piah said those transferred would be received as “guests of the Republic”. They are free to leave and may seek asylum, he added. Piah linked the decision to Liberia’s history as a settlement for free and formerly enslaved Black people from the US and a country whose citizens sought protection abroad during 14 years of civil war.
Piah insisted Liberia would not bear the cost. Accommodation, food and eventual onward travel would be covered by the US government and an international partner organisation, he said. However, the government has not provided further information about the people who arrived on Thursday.
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