Stepping onto the soil of the Democratic Republic of Congo means stepping into extraordinary inequality and a dearth of governance. It is a place where sewage runs in the streets and women may eke out a dollar or two a day selling cassava. Where children lug heavy jerrycans full of water for long distances in order to drink and bathe. Where men in prison often don’t eat unless someone from the outside brings them food.
This is not a place where you’d want to be stranded as a vulnerable migrant. Yet on April 17, 15 Latin American migrants who were being held in the U.S. landed in DRC’s capital, Kinshasa — not because they were from there, but because the Trump administration had made some kind of agreement with Congo to take them.
Welcome to one of the most controversial and bizarre immigration policies you may never have heard of: shipping migrants from the U.S. to random countries instead of sending them home, often to places where their safety can’t be guaranteed. I’ve written about this before, but it’s only getting worse, and deserves continued unpacking.
Congo: A Humanitarian Nightmare
The choice of Congo as a “safe” destination for migrants underscores the moral bankruptcy of the U.S. deportation program. DRC has been ravaged by conflict for decades, with as many as 7 million people internally displaced. Armed groups routinely commit mass atrocities, including widespread rape and recruitment of child soldiers, particularly in the east of the country. The Congolese government itself long has been accused by human rights organizations of arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings and suppressing political opposition.
This is where the U.S. is now sending people who have legal protection orders from American immigration judges — people who fought in immigration detention specifically to avoid being returned to dangerous places and situations.
Congo joins at least seven other African nations in these third-country deportation deals, many of them nations with notoriously repressive governments and poor human rights records, including Equatorial Guinea, South Sudan and Eswatini. The pattern is unmistakable: Offer cash-strapped nations with questionable human rights records American dollars, aid or other incentives in exchange for taking our “unwanted” migrants.
The Staggering Cost
According to a report from Democratic Senate staff, the Trump administration spent at least $40 million to deport approximately 300 migrants to countries other than their own as of January. That’s more than $133,000 per person for what amounts to an elaborate and expensive shell game.
The 15 deportees who arrived in Congo are all from Latin America and all believed to have legal protection from U.S. judges preventing their return to their home countries due to safety concerns, the Associated Press reported. They appear to be currently staying at a hotel in Kinshasa. At the same time, the International Organization for Migration is offering “assisted voluntary return” — a euphemistic way of pressuring them to go back to the very places they were legally protected from having to return to.
Legal Limbo and Violated Protections
The April 17 arrivals in Congo highlight one of the program’s most troubling aspects: These aren’t just immigration violations on paper — these are human beings with actual judicial protection orders, and fears. As one of their lawyers, U.S. Attorney Alma David told AP: “The fact that the focus is on offering them ‘voluntary’ return to their home country when they spent months in immigration detention in the U.S. fighting hard to not have to go home is very alarming.”
The absurdity is breathtaking. We’re taking people who our own courts have determined cannot safely return home, flying them at enormous expense to some of the world’s most dangerous countries, then asking if they’d like to “voluntarily” go back to the places they were fleeing.
“This is a scare tactic for them be able to tell people here in the U.S.: If you don’t self-deport, you could get sent to South Sudan,” a U.S. official told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to an committee member who spoke to the Guardian. “You could get sent to Eswatini.”
A Pattern of Problematic Partners
Congo’s agreement with the U.S., described as “temporary” and reflecting the country’s hilariously stated “commitment to human dignity and international solidarity,” follows deals with other questionable partners. Equatorial Guinea, whose vice president (the son of the country’s autocratic leader) is notorious worldwide for corruption, received $7.5 million. South Sudan — currently housing deportees in a gated compound with armed guards — sent Washington a wish list that included help prosecuting opposition leaders.
Many of these African nations have been negatively affected by Trump administration policies restricting trade and aid. It’s hard not to see how transactional these agreements are: aka, we’ll restore some benefits if you take our deportees.
Paying Twice for the Same Job
In many cases, the U.S. ends up paying for another flight to send these same migrants back to their home countries after their temporary stay. We’re literally paying twice to accomplish what could have been done in one trip — if the goal were actually efficient deportation rather than cruelty.
Internal documents show this world shuffling isn’t a small pilot program. There are 47 third-country agreements at various stages, with 15 completed and 10 near completion. The administration claims these agreements don’t even need a formal conclusion to start shipping people — a concerning lack of a legal framework for what amounts to state-sanctioned human trafficking.
The Bigger Picture
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio defends the program as necessary for removing “gang members,” but we’re spending astronomical sums to scatter vulnerable migrants across nations with documented violence and instability.
This program represents everything wrong with our current approach to immigration: It’s expensive, ineffective and dangerously irresponsible. We’re not solving immigration challenges; we’re creating new humanitarian crises by dumping migrants in countries that can’t or won’t protect them. The $40 million already burned through in this program could have instead funded comprehensive immigration courts, asylum processing improvements or actual humanitarian assistance.
The choice of a country like Congo as a destination reveals the true nature of the policy. It’s not about safety, efficiency or even deportation. It’s about inflicting maximum suffering and displacement on people our own courts have determined need protection.
When your immigration policy involves sending protected migrants to some of the world’s most dangerous countries, you’ve crossed the line from enforcement into mercilessness.
Congo promises “individual review” before potentially shipping migrants elsewhere, but what kind of review can anyone expect from a regime accused of systematically targeting vulnerable populations? We’re asking one of the world’s most unstable governments to safeguard people we’ve already determined are at risk.
The real question is: Why are we allowing our government to operate what amounts to international human trafficking while violating our own legal protections? These aren’t just policy failures — they’re moral failures that will define how history judges this moment.
The correct term for this seemingly inhuman system is shadenfreud! It is not only cruel, but it seems as though this corrupt administration gets great pleasure in causing and watching as much pain that can be inflicted on these people. Future generations will look back and be appalled at these actions.
The utter cruelty is staggering. And nobody knows this! The mainstream media is either ignorant or looking the other way.