First Liberia Deportees Land, Some Resist, Whereabouts Unknown While Haiti Flight Lands 161 in Cap-Haitien

Since Liberia announced on Tuesday, August 18 that it would accept up to 1,200 third-country deportees over the next year, the first flight carrying 20 people landed Thursday, August 20 at Roberts International Airport outside Monrovia. A small group of those deportees resisted leaving the plane, according to a US official who spoke to CBS News. They were escorted off, then returned to the aircraft, and their current whereabouts are unknown.

That detail didn't appear in the Liberian government's own statement, which described the arrangement as humanitarian. The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and Africanews all reported the group was bused away by Liberian authorities without being allowed to speak to reporters. None of those outlets mention the resistance incident CBS News flagged, which suggests it may not have been visible to the press pool on the ground, or wasn't confirmed by Liberian officials at the time of their reporting.

The deportees came largely from Latin American countries including Venezuela and Cuba, according to Al Jazeera, citing AFP and Reuters reporting. Liberia's Justice Minister Natu Oswald Tweh said most had immigration violations rather than criminal convictions, according to the Associated Press as reported by the Daily Wire. The deportees can apply for asylum in Liberia or leave the country if they choose, per Liberia's Ministry of Information.

Liberia's government has repeatedly stressed there's no quid pro quo. "The transfer of persons to Liberia is not a transaction with a quid pro quo," the Ministry of Information said in its statement, adding Liberia "has not demanded or received any compensation or promise of reward." But the US separately awarded Liberia $5 million this year for "migration management activities," according to Al Jazeera, and the Guardian reports the US pledged $124 million in assistance as part of the broader arrangement while extending Liberian visitor visas from 12 to 36 months. No direct payment is tied explicitly to accepting these 20 people, though a broader package of US aid and visa concessions runs alongside the deal.

Haiti flight lands the same week, different country, different crisis

Separately, the US deported more than 160 people to Haiti on Thursday, according to the Independent. This was the first deportation flight to Haiti since the Trump administration won its legal fight to end Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Haitians. The plane landed in Cap-Haitien, in northern Haiti, because the US government has banned commercial flights to Port-au-Prince through early September over gang violence that controls an estimated 70% of the capital.

Haiti's National Office of Migration director general, Jean Négot Bonheur Delva, said the deportees included both TPS holders and Haitians who had served prison sentences. "It is not the Haitian state that asks for them to be sent back," Delva said, according to the Independent. "Our mission is to welcome migrants of forced return." Some deportees weren't even born in Haiti; one told officials he came from the Dominican Republic and knew nothing about the country he was being sent to. Haitian immigration officials offered arriving deportees up to $65 and food.

The legal path here: the Supreme Court allowed TPS to end for Haitians in late June. A federal judge in Washington, D.C. lifted a remaining block on those deportations on August 5, which the Independent called "effectively a formality" after the Supreme Court ruling.

The bigger numbers behind both stories

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a cabinet meeting the US has now signed third-country deportation deals with 20 nations, according to Breitbart. Human Rights First puts the broader figure at deals with at least 35 countries and roughly 23,000 people sent to 26 of them as of early August, per the Guardian.

A February report from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats, cited by the Guardian, found the administration paid more than $32 million to five governments to accept about 300 third-country deportees, including $1.1 million per person to Rwanda for seven deportees and $7.5 million to Equatorial Guinea for 29. That same report found more than 80% of people sent to third countries eventually returned to their home countries anyway, often at additional taxpayer cost. The State Department disputed the report's characterization of its enforcement record, according to the Guardian, without specifying which findings it contests.

Rubio's own comments undercut the idea that third-country deportation is mainly about actually relocating people. He told the cabinet meeting that the threat alone often works: faced with removal to an unfamiliar country, migrants frequently choose voluntary deportation to their home country instead. From January through March, roughly 80,000 people took that option, according to Breitbart's account of Rubio's remarks.

None of the eight sources say what happened to the group that resisted deplaning in Liberia, or where they are now. CBS News' reporting on that detail hasn't been confirmed or addressed by Liberian officials in any of the other coverage reviewed here. The resistance incident on the first flight remains an open question hanging over what's supposed to be a 1,200-person, year-long pipeline.