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central african republic
Despite Court Protection Orders, Trump Admin Deports Refugees to War-Torn Central African Republic, Putting ‘Lives at Risk’
“It’s hard to fathom how deeply evil this is,” said Sen. Chris Murphy.
Jun 12, 2026
The US government advises Americans not to travel to the Central African Republic "for any reason." But it just deported nearly two dozen people to the war-torn country, including several refugees who fled persecution in other nations.
On Friday morning, Human Rights First's deportation flight tracker reported that a plane used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had landed in Accra, Ghana, after departing from Louisiana the previous day and was believed to be en route to the CAR's capital, Bangui.
Per The New York Times on Thursday, the administration was preparing to deport "at least two Iranian women who had sought refuge in the United States" as well as "migrants from Afghanistan and Syria."
According to their lawyers, several of the migrants had received court orders from judges prohibiting their deportation to their home countries, citing the risk of persecution there.
A lawyer for one of the Iranian women told the Times that neither of them has a criminal record and that they both have been granted court protection due to fear of threats to their freedom or lives if they returned to Iran. One is a Christian convert, and the other is a pro-democracy activist.
According to Reuters, just the activist ended up on the flight from Louisiana. But the Christian woman is still at risk, along with another Iranian national.
Human Rights First's @ICEFlightM is monitoring this egregious situation, and we urge our policy makers to decry this life-threatening flight and other deals that send people seeking safety back to the very harms from which they fled.
https://t.co/ABZZMTQNuS
— Human Rights First (@humanrights1st) June 11, 2026
The burden of proof to receive what is known as a “withholding of removal” status from an immigration judge is even higher than that needed for migrants to qualify for asylum.
Those seeking their deportations to be halted must demonstrate that it’s more likely than not that their life or freedom would be threatened if they returned to a specific country due to their race, religion, nationality, or political or social affiliation.
In order to get around orders protecting these migrants from deportation to their home countries, the administration is instead dumping them in what have been described as "third countries."
The flight departed on Thursday is the first US deportation flight to the CAR, which is one of the poorest countries in the world and is reeling from a civil war that's displaced more than a million people both inside and outside the country.
The country is under the State Department's highest travel advisory, warning US citizens not to go there "due to risk of unrest, crime, kidnapping, landmines, health, and terrorism."
This is the @StateDept travel advisory for the Central African Republic.
The United States—a self-proclaimed nation of refuge—is about to send refugees here. https://t.co/uxfexS5S73 pic.twitter.com/pvYyxIQHdN
— Sarah Pierce (@SarahPierceEsq) June 11, 2026
"People on this flight proved to a judge that they were likely to be persecuted in their home countries," said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. "This is profoundly unjust."
Human rights law experts Anjli Parrin and Savi Arvey wrote on Wednesday for Just Security that the administration was putting "lives at risk" by sending these migrants to a dangerous country where they know nobody and where basic healthcare infrastructure hardly exists.
They said the administration's deportation of these migrants "is the latest example of its dangerous and potentially life-threatening strategy: using secretive deals with countries to expel asylum seekers and migrants with no legal or personal connection to the places where they are being sent."
"Since early last year, the US government has signed a growing number of third-country forced transfer agreements with over 30 countries worldwide to expel and deport people to places where they have no legal or personal ties," they said.
"These deportations are often carried out in secrecy and without any semblance of due process," they added. "Individuals are often not given any advance warning or the opportunity to challenge their deportation to a third country—with many only discovering they are being sent to a country they may have never heard of while airborne."
Emily Trostle, a lawyer for the Iranian activist, told Reuters that the migrants facing deportation to the CAR "have absolutely no connection to this place."
“These individuals are being removed from the United States and abandoned in a country where they have no status, no connection, and no support network,” she said. “We fear they will ultimately be forced to return to the countries they originally fled.”
According to Human Rights First's Third Country Deportation Watch, governments around the world have been given $44 million from US taxpayers to receive these migrants. More than 19,000 people, it found, have been deported across 24 countries.
Most of them have been sent to Mexico, but the US has also shipped migrants to some of the poorest, most unstable nations in sub-Saharan Africa, including Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Many have faced arbitrary detention and torture or been returned to the country where they fled persecution.
In order to avoid having to allow over 1,000 Afghans who fought alongside US soldiers to settle as refugees in the US as planned, the Trump administration is reportedly trying to ink a deal with the Democratic Republic of the Congo to take them instead, but the plan was stalled amid public backlash, and the administration is seeking other options.
It's hard to fathom how deeply evil this is, and that we have people running our country who get sick pleasure from sending women fleeing violence in Iran to an African country in the middle of a brutal civil war. https://t.co/JaN8z2LFI2
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) June 11, 2026
The Iranian American Legal Defense Fund said on Thursday that the deportation of Iranian nationals was a “potentially fatal action,” as they could face danger in the CAR or be sent back to Iran.
Another person scheduled to be deported to the CAR was an elderly man from Syria, whose immigration attorney, Margaret Stock, told the Times that he had scars all over his body due to torture in his home country.
He is a Sufi Muslim and feared persecution if he returned there, and is in danger of lacking access to care for his diabetes if sent to the CAR. According to Stock, he received an emergency temporary order halting his deportation.
Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee in charge of funding for the Department of Homeland Security and its immigration agencies, responded to the Times report on the deportations with outrage.
"It's hard to fathom how deeply evil this is, and that we have people running our country who get sick pleasure from sending women fleeing violence in Iran to an African country in the middle of a brutal civil war," he said.
Reichlin-Melnick agreed: "Evil is the right word for... taking people who are safe in the United States, who have proven to a judge they would be persecuted in their home country, and dumping them in a random country in the middle of a civil war."
"No previous administration would have done this, despite it likely being legal," he added.
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Largely Driven by Climate Crisis, 9 Out of 10 Least-Reported Humanitarian Crises of 2019 Were in Africa
"Does a crisis really happen if it is not in the headlines? YES."
Jan 27, 2020
Out of the top 10 most under-reported humanitarian crises in the world last year--many of them climate-related--nine were on the African continent, according to a new report.
Madagascar had the least-reported crisis in the study--entitled "Suffering in Silence" (pdf)--released Tuesday by CARE International, as 2.6 million people in the country are affected by chronic drought which has left more than 900,000 in immediate need of food assistance.
Out of 24 million online media articles examined by CARE International, just 612 reports were about the humanitarian emergency in Madagascar--and the country was just the most extreme example of the international community's neglect of the world's second-most populous continent.
"In 2019, over 51 million people suffered in 10 crises away from the public eye," the report reads. "Although for the average person on earth, life is better today than ever before, around 2% of the global population (160 million people) will require $28.8 billion in humanitarian assistance to survive. This is a fivefold increase of needs since 2007."
With 80% of Madagascar's population engaged in agriculture, the climate crisis and resulting drought has caused damage to many families' livelihoods. The food shortages brought on by chronic drought conditions also led to Madagascar having the fourth-highest rate of malnutrition in the world, making it easier for diseases like measles to infect over 100,000 people in 2019.
CARE International noted that millions of people in Africa are "suffering in silence" even as the climate crisis gains more international attention, thanks to grassroots climate activists like Greta Thunberg, Extinction Rebellion, and students all over the world--including across Africa--who have led climate marches over the past year.
"It is shocking to see how little media reporting there is about human suffering related to global warming in the South, the lack of political action to address this injustice, and solutions applied to ease the burden for communities."
--Sally Austin, CARE International"The increased public attention for the global climate crisis is encouraging, but we must ensure that the conversation is not limited to the Global North and much-needed transformations there," said Sally Austin, head of emergency operations for CARE International. "It is shocking to see how little media reporting there is about human suffering related to global warming in the South, the lack of political action to address this injustice, and solutions applied to ease the burden for communities."
Other crises in Africa that have been intensified by the climate crisis include Zambia's droughts, which left 2.3 million people in need of food assistance, and a mix of extreme drought and flooding in Kenya.
In southern Africa, where Zambia lies, temperatures are rising at two times the global rate. The pattern has contributed to a sharp drop in wheat and maize crops as well as in safe drinking water in much of the country.
Daily life for many in Zambia illustrates what climate leaders mean when they warn that people in frontline communities--who have contributed the least to the climate crisis--are suffering the most.
"The drought has placed additional hardships and risks on women as they cope with the changing climate," the report reads. "For example, some women now report waking up as early as 3:00 am in order to be the first to collect the scarce water available and then spend all day searching for food. Many have resorted to collecting whatever wild fruits they can find to feed their families."
In Kenya, rainfall in 2019 was at least 20% below average, and as CARE International says, "When there is not too little rainfall, there is far too much."
"Heavy rains displaced tens of thousands of people during the fall months and destroyed farmland and livestock," the report reads. "This worsened an already dire food situation in the country."
North Korea is the only country on CARE's list that isn't in Africa; other under-reported emergencies are taking place in Eritrea, Central African Republic, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, and the countries of the Lake Chad Basin--made up of Nigeria, Chad, and Cameroon.
None of the countries on the list were covered in more than about 9,000 media articles all over the world throughout 2019.
Armed conflicts are major drivers of humanitarian crises in several African countries. CARE's report notes that the climate crisis is worsening political and economic instability across the continent.
"We're seeing increasing linkages between the effects of man-made climate change and the longevity and complexity of humanitarian crises," said Austin. "From Madagascar to Lake Chad to North Korea, the majority of crises ranked in our report are partly a consequence of declining natural resources, increasing extreme weather events and global warming more broadly."
The report notes that three of the least-reported crises in the world are also on the United Nations' list of the least-funded international emergencies.
With this in mind, CARE says, media outlets and humanitarian groups can help to close the gaps by considering "reporting as a form of aid."
"Crises that are neglected are also often the most underfunded and protracted," the report reads. "With close links between public awareness and funding, it needs to be acknowledged that generating attention is a form of aid in itself. As such, humanitarian funding should include budget lines to raise public awareness, particularly in low-profile countries."
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