The Trump administration is planning to transport a group of immigrants to Libya on a U.S. military plane, according to U.S. officials, another sharp escalation in a deportation program that has sparked widespread legal challenges and intense political debate.
The nationalities of the migrants were not immediately clear, but a flight to Libya carrying the deportees could leave as soon as Wednesday, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation.
The decision to send deportees to Libya was striking. The country is racked with conflict, and human rights groups have called conditions in its network of migrant detention centers “horrific” and “deplorable.”
The Libya operation falls in line with the Trump administration’s effort to not only deter migrants from trying to enter the country illegally but also to send a strong message to those in the country illegally that they can be deported to countries where they could face brutal conditions. Reuters earlier reported the possibility of a U.S. deportation flight to Libya.
The planning for the flight to Libya has been tightly held, and could still be derailed by logistical, legal or diplomatic obstacles.
The White House declined to comment. The State Department and Defense Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The potential use of Libya as a destination comes after the administration set off an earlier furor by deporting a group of Venezuelans to El Salvador, where they are being held in a maximum-security prison designed for terrorists.
President Trump and his aides labeled those men violent gang members and cited a rarely used wartime law in their expulsions, a move that has been challenged in the courts.
The State Department warns against traveling to Libya “due to crime, terrorism, unexploded land mines, civil unrest, kidnapping and armed conflict.” The country remains divided after years of civil war following the 2011 overthrow of its longtime dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. A United Nations-recognized government in Tripoli rules western Libya, and another in Benghazi, led by the warlord Khalifa Haftar, 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 met with several Trump administration officials. Mr. Trump had friendly dealings in his first term with Mr. Haftar, who controls most of Libya’s lucrative oil fields.
A major transit point for Europe-bound migrants, Libya operates numerous detention facilities for refugees and migrants. Amnesty International branded those sites “horrific” and “a hellscape” in a 2021 report, which found evidence of “sexual violence, against men, women and children.” The Global Detention Project says detained migrants in Libya endure “physical mistreatment and torture,” forced labor and even slavery.
In its annual report on human rights practices last year, the State Department cited “harsh and life-threatening” conditions in Libya’s detention centers and found that migrants in those facilities, including children, had “no access to immigration courts or due process.”
Human rights groups say that European governments have been complicit in such treatment by working with Libya to intercept migrants bound for the continent and send them to the detention centers.
“I have been in those migrant prisons and it’s no place for migrants,” said Frederic Wehrey, a Libya expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It’s just a horrific place to dump any vulnerable person.”
Earlier this year, the Trump administration deported several hundred people to Panama from countries in the Eastern Hemisphere, including Iran and China. The migrants, who said they did not know where they were going, were detained in a hotel for several days before being taken to a camp near the jungle. Some of the migrants were later released from Panamanian custody.
Around the same time, U.S. officials also deported a group of around 200 migrants to Costa Rica from countries in the Eastern Hemisphere, including Iran. A lawsuit filed against the country argued that the deportations and subsequent detention in Costa Rica “could cause irreparable harm” for a group of children sent to the country.
After the United States struck a deal with El Salvador to take Venezuelan migrants and imprison them, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was working to secure similar agreements with additional nations.
“I intend to continue to try and identify other countries willing to accept and jail as many gang members as we can send them,” Mr. Rubio told The New York Times.
The planned use of a military plane for the flight to Libya comes after the Defense Department has assisted in transporting migrants to locations such as India, Guatemala and Ecuador.
In late March, Defense Department officials flew a group of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador without any staff from the Department of Homeland Security on the plane, according to court records. The flight took off from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to El Salvador and included four Venezuelans. A government filing indicated that the Department of Homeland Security did not “direct” the plane to take off for El Salvador.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.
