‘Not a small issue’: People deported by US to Liberia face uncertain future

Monrovia, Liberia – Samwar Fallah began receiving calls this week from people in the United States seeking information about 20 relatives sent to Liberia, a country none of them is a citizen of.

The families asked the Monrovia-based lawyer to find out where their relatives were taken and what would happen to them. He could not tell them much.

He knows the group landed at Roberts International Airport near capital Monrovia on Thursday and was driven away in a bus by Liberian officials. He does not know where they were taken, whether they are free to leave, or what legal status they now hold.

Fallah avoids calling them deportees because the government has not defined their status under Liberian law.

“You cannot relocate a citizen from one country to another without clear information as to why that person has been relocated,” Fallah told Al Jazeera. “Imagine you coming from maybe El Salvador and then you find out you are on a plane to Liberia.”

The group is the first transferred under an arrangement allowing Liberia to receive up to 1,200 people deported from the US over the next 12 months.

The Liberian government announced the move on Tuesday, two days before the flight. Politicians say they were not consulted.

Fallah, assisting the families without charge alongside two US immigration lawyers, said they want to know whether their relatives may settle in Liberia, choose where they can go, or eventually return to the US.