Trump administration plans to send immigrants to Libya during military flights

According to U.S. officials, the Trump administration plans to transport a group of immigrants onto U.S. military aircraft, another sharp escalation in a deportation program that has sparked widespread legal challenges and intense political debate.

According to officials, the nationality of the immigrants was not immediately cleared, but flights carrying deported Libya may leave Wednesday, where they spoke on anonymously because they have no right to discuss the action.

The decision to send deported people to Libya is shocking. The country is full of conflict, with human rights groups calling for conditions in their network of immigration detention centers to be “terrible” and “tragic”.

Libya’s actions are consistent with the Trump administration’s efforts not only to prevent immigrants from entering the country illegally, but also sends a strong message to those illegal in the country that they can be deported to countries that may face cruel conditions. Reuters earlier reported on the possibility of deportation from the United States heading to Libya.

Flight plans to Libya have been strictly held and may still be derailed due to logistical, legal or diplomatic obstacles.

The White House declined to comment. The State Council and the Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Libya’s potential use as a destination comes after the government’s earlier rage through the deportation of a group of Venezuelans to El Salvador, where they were held in the highest security prison designed for terrorists.

President Trump and his aides marked the men’s violent gang members and cited rarely used wartime laws in deportation, a move that was challenged in court.

The State Department warned that “traveling to Libya due to crime, terrorism, unexploded land and mines, civil unrest, kidnapping and armed conflict.” The country is still split after long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi overthrew years of civil war in 2011. The United Nations-recognized government that ruled western Libya in Tripoli, Benghazi, led by warlord Khalifa Haftar, controlled the east.

The United States has only formal relations with the Tripoli government. But Mr. Haftar's son Saddam was in Washington last week and met with several Trump administration officials. Mr. Trump had friendly contacts during his first term with Mr. Haftar, who controlled most of Libya’s lucrative oil fields.

Libya is the main border crossing point for Europe to restrain immigration, and many detention facilities are carried out for refugees and migrants. Amnesty International branded “terror” and “hell landscape” as “terror” in a 2021 report that found evidence of “sexual violence against men, women and children, sexual violence against men, women and children.” The Global Detention Project says detained immigrants in Libya suffer “physical abuse and torture”, forced labor and even slavery.

In its annual report on human rights acts last year, the State Department cited the “harsh and life-threatening” conditions at the Libyan detention center and found that immigrants at these facilities, including children, “cannot access immigration courts or appropriate procedures.”

Human rights groups say the European government has intercepted migrants bound to the African continent and sent them to detention centers through cooperation with Libya.

“I’ve been in those immigration prisons, and this is not a place to immigrate,” said Frederic Wehrey, a Libyan expert at the Carnegie International Peace Endowment Foundation. “It’s just a horror place to abandon any vulnerable person.”

Earlier this year, the Trump administration expelled hundreds of people from countries in the eastern hemisphere, including Iran and China, to Panama. The immigrants said they didn't know where to go, were detained at the hotel for a few days before being taken to a camp near the jungle. Some immigrants were later released from Panama detention centers.

Around the same time, U.S. officials also deported about 200 immigrants to Costa Rica from countries in the eastern hemisphere, including Iran. The lawsuit filed against the country argues that deportation and subsequent detention in Costa Rica “could cause irreparable harm to a group of children sent to the country”.

After U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reached an agreement with El Salvador and imprisoned him, Marco Rubio said he was working to reach a similar agreement with other countries.

“I intend to continue trying to identify other countries willing to accept and imprison, and we can send them,” Rubio told the New York Times.

Military aircraft are planned to fly to Libya after the Ministry of Defense helps transport migrants to locations such as India, Guatemala and Ecuador.

In late March, Defense Department officials flew a group of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador without any of the Department of Homeland Security employees on the plane, according to court records. The flight departs from Guantana Bay in Cuba to El Salvador, which includes four Venezuela. Government applications indicate that the Department of Homeland Security has not “guided” the plane to take off to El Salvador.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs Contribution report.