Flight is second to Central African Republic since June, advocates say
A U.S. deportation flight carrying dozens of people landed Saturday in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, including an Afghan man in his early twenties whose family members served alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan, according to his lawyer and an immigration-rights organization.
A U.S. immigration judge had previously granted the man protection against deportation to Afghanistan, his lawyer Alma David said, citing fears of persecution by the Taliban. His family in Afghanistan had received threats from the Taliban because of the work performed by his brothers in support of the U.S. military, according to court documents seen by The Associated Press.
One of the man’s brothers lives in the United States and served in the Afghan National Army, which collaborated with the U.S. military before the Taliban seized power in 2021, David said. Another brother was a pilot trained by the U.S. military and was killed by the Taliban, she added.
The flight was the second to land in the Central African Republic since June, when a similar aircraft carried two dozen migrants, including an Iranian woman facing persecution in her home country. Savi Arvey, director of policy, refugee and immigrant rights at Human Rights First, said the Saturday flight included 12 Afghans and eight Iranians, as well as several people from Nepal and Nicaragua.
Under a series of often-secret bilateral agreements, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to two dozen countries that are not their own as it pushes ahead with expanded immigration enforcement, advocates say. Immigration lawyers say the practice is being used as a legal loophole to indirectly return some asylum seekers to countries they fled.
The Associated Press contributed reporting from Dakar, Senegal.