[STATEMENT] IMA Raises Alarm Over Trump’s Deportation of Migrants to Libya and to Other War-Torn Countries
The International Migrants Alliance strongly condemns Donald Trump’s latest move to hastily and unjustly deport migrants regardless of their origins to Libya and other war-torn countries. These deportations are not only inhumane; they are deliberate acts of repression meant to isolate migrants, deny them due process, and block access to support networks and legal protections.
By deporting migrants to unsafe third countries like Libya despite clear warnings from the U.S. State Department about “life-threatening” detention conditions, the Trump administration is knowingly placing thousands in harm’s way. These actions are designed to strip migrants of the ability to seek asylum, access legal assistance, or organize and campaign for their rights. Once outside U.S. borders, especially in countries with little to no institutional protections or humanitarian infrastructure, migrants become easier to silence, disappear, or detain indefinitely.
This directly undermines international law, including the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits returning individuals to countries where they may face persecution, torture, or death. But beyond legal violations, this is a political strategy: by deporting to third countries, the U.S. government aims to suppress migrant resistance, obscure accountability, and erode global solidarity with displaced peoples.
This act is not about national security or public safety, it is about using state power to criminalize the poor, the displaced, and the racialized. Trump’s policies are part of a broader system of militarized borders, for-profit detention, and white supremacist fear-mongering that punishes those who dare to move for survival.
These attacks on migrants also cannot be separated from the conditions that force people to flee in the first place. Migrants deported to countries like Libya, Somalia, Yemen, or El Salvador are often escaping economic devastation, political instability, and conflict—many of which have been worsened or directly caused by U.S. foreign policy, military aggression, and neoliberal economic impositions. Decades of debt dependency, land grabbing, privatization, and structural unemployment have stripped millions of their livelihoods and made migration a matter of survival.
The International Migrants Alliance stands in firm solidarity with all migrants and refugees facing these violent deportation policies. We call on all grassroots movements, human rights defenders, and migrant advocates to resist Trump’s campaign of displacement, dehumanization, and isolation. We demand the immediate halt of all deportations to unsafe third countries, the upholding of international legal standards, and the protection of every migrant’s right to organize, resist, and live in dignity.
International Migrants Alliance
May 24, 2025
