On Wednesday, May 20th Sierra Leone is scheduled to receive its first group of migrants deported from the United States, as U.S. president Donald Trump’s administration pushes ahead with expulsions of deportees to third countries.
The Sierra Leonean foreign minister said an initial charter flight carrying 25 migrants was expected in the capital Freetown on May 20th, under a deal for the country to take in annually up to 300 deportees of west African origin.
Sierra Leone joins a list of African countries that have struck similar deals with Washington: Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Rwanda and South Sudan. According to Foreign Minister Timothy Musa Kabba,
We are accepting the deportees because they are from west Africa and some have Sierra Leonean documentation obtained many years ago.
They have a right to stay in the country for a period of 90 days and they can travel back home to their country of origin.
The United States will provide $1.5 million (€1.3 million) to support humanitarian and operational costs connected to the arrangement, his ministry said.
African countries agreeing to take in irregular migrants from the United States typically get U.S. funding in exchange. Some, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, have agreed to take in deportees from other regions, such as Latin America.
Separately, Sierra Leone’s First Lady, Fatima Jabbe-Bio, is facing intense scrutiny for maintaining a publicly owned council flat in south London despite residing in a luxury presidential palace in Freetown. The 45-year-old former actress and model has retained the two-bedroom tenancy in Southwark since 2007, even after her husband, Julius Maada Bio, became president in 2018.
While Jabbe-Bio defended her dual-housing arrangement to the BBC by insisting she pays her own rent and has committed no crime because her children are British citizens, her actions appear to violate council rules requiring the property to be a tenant’s primary residence.
Southwark Council declined to comment directly on her case but confirmed that it regularly investigates allegations of tenancy fraud.
