WASHINGTON – The Trump government is planning to transport a group of immigrants to Libya on a US military plane, according to US officials, in a new climb in a deportation program that generated wide legal contestation and intense political debate.
The nationalities of migrants were not revealed, but a flight to Libya taking the deported could leave on Wednesday (7), according to the authorities, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss the operation.
The decision to send deported to Libya was surprising. The country is dipped in conflict, and human rights groups have called the conditions in its network of migrant detention centers “horrible” and “deplorable”.
The Libya operation is aligned with the Trump government’s effort not only to discourage migrants to try to enter the country illegally, but also to send a strong message to those in the country illegally that they can be deported to countries where they can face brutal conditions. THE Reuters He had previously reported the possibility of a US deportation flight to Libya.
Planning for the flight to Libya has been kept confidential, and can still be frustrated by logistics, legal or diplomatic obstacles.
The White House refused to comment. The State Department and the Defense Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Libya’s potential use as a destination comes after the government has generated a controversy before deporting a group of Venezuelans to El Salvador, where they are being kept in a maximum security arrest designed for terrorists.
President Donald Trump and his advisers labeled these men as members of violent gangs and cited a war law of war rarely used in their expulsions, a measure that has been challenged in the courts.
The State Department warns against travel to Libya “due to crimes, terrorism, non -detonated land mines, civil agitation, kidnapping and armed conflicts.” The country remains divided after years of civil war after the overthrow of its longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. A UN -recognized government in Tripoli rules Western Libya, while another in Benghazi, led by War Lord Khalifa Haftar, controls the east.
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The United States has formal relations only with the Tripoli government. But Haftar’s son Saddam was in Washington last week and met several Trump government officials. Trump had friendly relationships in his first term with Haftar, which controls most liquid oil fields in Libya.
Important traffic point for migrants to Europe, Libya operates numerous detention facilities for refugees and migrants. Amnesty International has classified these places as “horrible” and “a hell” in a 2021 report, which found evidence of “sexual violence against men, women and children.” Global Detent Project states that migrants detained in Libya suffer “physical maltreatment and torture,” forced labor and even slavery.
In its annual report on Human Rights Practices last year, the State Department cited “hard and life -threatening” conditions at Libyan detention centers and found that migrants in these facilities, including children, did not “access immigration courts or due process.”
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Human rights groups claim that European governments have been accomplices in this treatment, working with Libya to intercept migrants to Europe and send them to detention centers.
“I’ve been in these migrant arrests and it’s not a place for migrants,” said Frederic Wehrey, a Libya Endowment for International Peace Libyan expert. “It’s just a horrible place to dump any vulnerable person.”
Earlier this year, the Trump administration deported several hundred people to Panama from Eastern hemisphere countries, including Iran and China. The migrants, who said they did not know where they were going, were arrested in a hotel for several days before being taken to a field near the jungle. Some of the migrants were later released from Panamanha custody.
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At approximately at the same time, US officials also deported a group of about 200 migrants to Costa Rica from eastern countries, including Iran. A lawsuit against the country argued that deportations and subsequent detention in Costa Rica “could cause irreparable damage” to a group of children sent to the country.
After the United States signed an agreement with El Salvador to receive Venezuelan migrants and arrest them, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was working to secure similar agreements with other nations.
“I intend to keep trying to identify other countries willing to accept and arrest as many gang members as possible that we can send them,” Rubio told the The New York Times.
The planned use of a military airplane to the flight to Libya comes after the Defense Department assisted in transporting migrants to locations such as India, Guatemala and Ecuador.
At the end of March, defense department officials flew a group of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador without any internal security department official on board the plane, according to judicial records. The flight took off from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to El Salvador and included four Venezuelans. A government record indicated that the internal security department did not “drive” the plane to take off to El Salvador.
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