Trump Administration Plans to Send Migrants to Libya on a Military Flight

The Trump administration plans to transport a group of immigrants to Libya in an American military plane, according to US officials, another acute escalation in a deportation program that has caused a broad dissemination of legal challenges and an intense political debate.

The nationalities of the migrants were not clear immediately, but a flight to Libya that transported the deportees could leave as soon as Wednesday, according to the officials, who talked under the condition of anonymity because it agrees.

The decision to send the deportees to Libya was surprising. The country is full of conflicts, and human rights groups have called conditions in their network of “horrible” and “deplorable” migrant detention centers.

Libya’s operation is in line with the effort of the Trump administration to not only deter migrants from trying to illegally enter the country, but also to send a strong message to those in the country illegally that had the countries. Reuters previously reported the possibility of an American deportation flight to Libya.

Flight planning has a closely hero bone, and could still be derailed by logistic, legal or diplomatic obstacles.

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

The potential use of Libya as destination occurs after the administration triggered a rage before deporting a group of Venezuelans to El Salvador, where they are detained in a maximum security prison designed for terrorists.

President Trump and their AIDS qualified the violent gang members and cited a war law rarely used in their expulsions, a measure that has been challenged in court.

The State Department warns against traveling to Libya “due to crime, terrorism, unleashed land mines, civil disturbances, kidnapping and armed conflict.” The country remains divided after years of civil war after the overthrow in 2011 of its long -standing dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. A recognized government of the United Nations in Tripoli Western rules of Libya, and another in Benghazi, directed by the Lord of the Khalifa Haftar war, controls the east.

The United States has formal relations only with the Tripoli government. But Mr. Haftar’s son, Saddam, was in Washington last week, and with several Trump administration officials. Trump had friendly treatment in his first term with Mr. Haffar, who control them or Libya’s lucrative oil fields.

An important transit point for migrants to Europe, Libya operates numerous detention facilities for refugees and migrants. Amnesty International described those “horrific” and “A Hellscape” sites in a 2021 report, which found evidence of “sexual violence, against men, women and children.” The global detention project says that migrants arrested in Libya support “physical abuse and torture”, forced labor and even slavery.

In its annual report on human rights practices last year, the State Department cited conditions of “hard and attractive” in the detention centers of Libya and discovered that migrants in those facilities, including or the Duore process. “

Human rights groups say that European governments have been consulted in said treatment working with Libya to intercept migrants to the continent and send them to detention centers.

“I have legs in those migrant prisons and it is not a place for migrants,” said Frederic Wehrey, an expert in Libya at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It is a horrible place to throw anyone vulnerable.”

Earlier this year, the Trump administration deported several hundred people to Panama from countries of the Eastern Hemisphere, 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 tasks of a camp near the jungle. Some of the migrants were released from Panamanian custody.

Almost at the same time, US officials also deported a group of around 200 migrants to Costa Rica from countries of the eastern hemisphere, including Iran. A lawsuit filed against the country argued that deportations and subsequent detection in Costa Rica “could cause irreparable damage” for a group of children sent to the country.

After the United States reached an agreement with El Salvador to take Venezuelan migrants and imprison them, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was working to ensure similar agreements with adnital nations.

“I intend to continually try to identify other countries willing to accept and imprison as many gang members as we can send them,” Rubio told New York Times.

The planned use of a military plane for the flight to Libya occurs after the Department of Defense has helped transport migrants to places like India, Guatemala and Ecuador.

At the end of March, the officials of the Department of Defense flew to a group of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador without any personnel of the National Security Department on the plane, according to judicial records. The flight took off from the Bay of Guantanamo, Cuba, El Salvador and included four Venezuelans. A government presentation indicated that the National Security Department did not “add” the plane to take off to El Salvador.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs Contributed reports.