Donald Trump’s US is at it again. Just when I thought Washington had exhausted its list of African countries willing to receive migrants it doesn’t want, along comes another. This time, it’s the Central African Republic (CAR), one of the world’s poorest countries, which the American government advises its citizens not to visit because of civil unrest, violent crime, kidnapping for ransom, and extremely limited medical services.

So, by the logic of US politicians and senior bureaucrats, the CAR is too dangerous for American tourists, but perfectly acceptable for deportees. You really could not make this up.

Le Monde, the highly regarded French daily, reported last month that a US charter flight had recently landed in the CAR capital, Bangui, carrying migrants hailing from Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and Türkiye. Among these hapless souls – too scared to remain in their own countries and denied refuge by the land of the free – were Iranian women who had previously been granted judicial protection in the US after successfully arguing that they faced persecution if returned to Iran.

Think about that for a moment: the women are too vulnerable for Iran but not so for the CAR. In a January 15 advisory notice posted on its website, the US State Department warns citizens not to travel to the African country. Apart from concerns relating to unrest, crime, kidnapping, and a constrained medical sector, the department states: “Ineffective border controls may allow criminal and terrorist groups to seek temporary refuge in the CAR. Terrorists can attack without warning. They may target foreign and local government facilities as well as tourist areas.”

Only in the strange arithmetic of modern geopolitics does the latest US third-country arrangement make sense.

While every nation, including the US, has a sovereign right to enforce its immigration laws, there is a world of difference between doing that and outsourcing the political inconvenience of dealing with unwanted immigrants and asylum seekers.

Africa is fast becoming the US’s deportation subcontractor. One by one, countries across the continent have quietly joined the list, with whatever the quid pro quo that exists remaining obscure. Since deportations started in mid-2025, the network of destination countries on our continent has expanded to include Eswatini, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Uganda, and now the CAR – a total of nine.

Washington has concluded partnerships elsewhere – with Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Paraguay – but, looking at the numbers, it is in Africa where the third-country policy has taken deeper root.

As I have repeatedly written in this column, I am appalled by the infringement of the deportees’ human rights. While the US government can enforce its immigration laws as it pleases, this does not give it a licence to dispatch vulnerable people to countries they are not connected to, including by ancestry or language. The poor individuals could foreseeably be handed over to the governments of their home countries, the very persecutors they ran away from in the first place.

That’s why the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) – an African Union (AU) body – should be lauded. It did not shy away from calling out previous arrangements when they surfaced. It’s important to do so; remaining silent will normalise third-country deportations, and more African countries will likely join in exchanging political favours with the US administration by becoming part of the destination network.

For evidence of what happens when those with clout choose to look the other way or protest only feebly or half-heartedly when something goes wrong, look no further than the resurgence in military takeovers of government since 2020. I get the sense that when the AU condemns a coup, the generals behind it simply chuckle to themselves, secure in the knowledge that there will be no follow-through to threatened action, such as membership suspension. Of course, we know that the coup leaders simply reinvent themselves as civilian politicians and, leveraging the advantage of incumbency, win the next election.

So, folks at the ACHPR – and others – continue screaming injustice each time an African country accepts migrants the US doesn’t want, all for 30 pieces of silver – the price of betrayal once before, and perhaps once again.