A view of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo – a vast urban area where more than 15 million people live.
Schalk Van Zuydam/AP
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Schalk Van Zuydam/AP
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of the Congo – None of them imagined they would end up in Kinshasa. On April 17, the U.S. government deported 15 people to the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, an extremely poor African country wracked by years of conflict.
The group – which includes men and women from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru – is the first to arrive as part of a secret migration deal made with the Trump administration.
“They took us, they put us on a plane, and they tied our hands and feet with chains,” said a Colombian man sitting on a plastic chair in a shabby hotel near Kinshasa’s airport. The deportees did not know their final destination until they boarded the plane, he said.
NPR interviewed five of the Latin American exiles. We are not naming them because they say it could put them at risk of potential threats in their home countries.
Everyone said they would face danger if they returned, but they wanted to do so because Congo was dangerous and poor.
Many also said they were deported despite ongoing court cases over their right to remain in the US
While deportees are receiving regular meals, hotels may have water shut off for days, and rodents scurrying about in their rooms. Mosquitoes are also omnipresent. They are free to leave their hotel, but are being urged by security there to stay inside – effectively cut off from a country with which they have no connections, and whose language they do not speak.
Two of those deported said they had not been vaccinated against yellow fever before being expelled from the US. Malaria as well as mosquito-borne diseases are endemic in Congo.
“I know there is an armed conflict in Congo with an outbreak of yellow fever,” said an Ecuadorian man, explaining why he did not want to stay.
Much of eastern Congo, about 1,000 miles from Kinshasa, has been plagued by decades of violence, a legacy of the regional wars that swept the region in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Rwanda-backed rebels, M23, They have largely captured territory since launching a rebellion in late 2021, and run a parallel government administration in the east. But armed conflict is also taking place about 70-100 miles northeast of Kinshasa.
According to the World Bank, Kinshasa itself is a megacity of more than 15 million people, where most residents struggle to survive day to day.
“It’s a different world outside,” said a Colombian woman at the hotel, who noted that none of the group could speak French, Congo’s official language.
A quiet agreement with visible results
While more deportees are expected from the US, almost no details related to the US-Congo migration agreement have been made public.
Congo is not the only African country with which the Trump administration has made migration deals. Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan and Eswatini are among several countries that have agreed to take third-country deportees as part of a broader US immigration crackdown.
Congolese government on 17 April said That the migrants would only stay in the country temporarily, and the US government would foot the bill. But it’s not clear how many people will come to the country, or what will happen to them once they get there, or how long they will stay.
Deportees NPR spoke to said they have been given no credible option but to return to their home countries.
The US State Department said it had “no comment on the details of our diplomatic communications with other governments.”
according to AfghanEvacThe Trump administration, a nonprofit group that helps resettle Afghan displaced people, is also considering sending 1,100 Afghans to Congo, many of whom helped U.S. forces during the war in Afghanistan. However, President Trump told reporters last week that he was not aware of the plan.
Yet, in Congo itself, the arrival of Latin Americans, and the prospect of hundreds of Afghans following them, is proving highly controversial.
On Monday, protesters burned tires in Kinshasa and marched through the streets carrying banners against hosting “Afghan mercenaries.” This follows a sit-in in front of the US Embassy held last week.
For many Congolese people, the migration deal is in bad taste. Approximately one million Congolese citizens are refugees themselves, who for the most part have sought asylum in neighboring states. The conflict has also displaced approximately seven million people inside Congo.
Opposition politicians have been quick to condemn this policy. Over the weekend, Congolese opposition politician Dely Tsesanga challenged President Felix Tshisekedi on the issue.
“What have the Congolese people done to you that you would turn this already devastated country into a dumping ground for US immigration and security policies?” Sesanga said.
‘We don’t know what will happen’
For the deportees back in the hotel, there is confusion and also fear. Many people said that they neither had money nor passports. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is assisting the group, and some are in contact with their lawyers in the US.
The Ecuadorian man compared the situation to human trafficking, noting that the group was forcibly deported.
“I’m in a place here where I can’t do anything,” he said. “I want to return to my country.”
A Colombian woman said that all of her cases were complex. “We don’t know what will happen to us,” he said.
Right now, they are in limbo – thousands of miles away from home, in a country that is unfamiliar to them, where they are not welcome and have little sense of what will happen next.
