Sierra Leone on Wednesday became the latest African country to receive migrants expelled from the United States under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

A first plane carrying nine West African migrants landed Wednesday morning at the international airport just outside Freetown, an AFP journalist saw.

“We have received nine deportees this morning from the US,” Foreign Minister Timothy Musa Kabba told AFP, after initially saying 25 migrants would arrive.

The deportees are from Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea and Senegal, according to authorities. Seven men and two women, heads bowed, were seen boarding a minibus outside the airport under police escort.

All were “traumatised due to the months in chains during detention in the US,” said Doris Bah, a health ministry official at the scene. Most of them, she told AFP, wanted to return to their home countries.

“Some of the deportees were arrested on the streets and their place of work while another was arrested while playing football in the US,” Bah said.

They will be housed in a hotel and are expected to return to their countries within two weeks at the latest, she added.

The authorities in Freetown have agreed to accept up to 300 people a year expelled by the United States — but only from the member states of the west African economic bloc ECOWAS.

“We are taking in these deported people because they are from west Africa, and some of them hold Sierra Leonean residence permits obtained many years ago,” Foreign Minister Timothy Musa Kabba told AFP by telephone late Tuesday.

They “have the right to stay in the country for 90 days and can then return to their country of origin”, he added.
The United States is providing $1.5 million to support the programme “to cover the humanitarian and operational costs linked to this agreement”, according to a foreign ministry document consulted by AFP.