President Donald Trump is planning to send a planeful of deportees to Libya—but both of Libya’s governments say they won’t take them, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, the prime minister for the Government of National Unity based in Tripoli, wrote on social media that “Libya refuses to be a destination for the deportation of migrants under any pretext.”
Dbeibeh said that Libya would not be held to any agreements made by “illegitimate entities.”
The Libyan National Army, which controls the eastern half of the country from Benghazi, also released a statement rejecting the arrival of deportees from the United States, saying that accepting deportees would “violate sovereignty in the homeland.”
While the U.S. government only has foreign relations with Dbeibeh’s government, the son of Khalifa Haftar, the general turned warlord in the east, visited with Trump administration officials last month. The meetings were not about deportations, according to the State Department and a Libyan official, CNN reported.
It’s not clear that any formal deal was made to facilitate the removal of immigrants to a potentially hostile host country. Libya’s migrant detention centers are notorious for subjecting detainees to severe beatings, sexual violence, extortion, and forced labor, according to a 2021 report from Amnesty International.
Lawyers for immigrants currently held in Texas have asked a judge for an emergency order barring any potential deportations to Libya. The lawyers argued that carrying out such a flight without warning would “blatantly” violate court orders.
Previous reports said that a military plane potentially carrying hundreds of immigrants could depart for Libya as soon as Wednesday, so it’s entirely possible that wheels are already up on the latest phase of Trump’s inhumane mass deportation crusade.
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