Colombians Stranded in Congo After Being Expelled From the US: ‘I Never Thought I Would Get to Know Africa Under These Circumstances’

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Cubillos is one of 15 Latin Americans deported to the DRC, in the first group of migrants expelled by Trump to this country of more than 115 million inhabitants. Kinshasa announced on April 5 that it would begin receiving groups of deportees this month and would host them temporarily, in a campaign fully funded by Washington. It is the latest African country to reach similar agreements with the White House, following Ghana, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, South Sudan and Eswatini. The U.S. Congress estimated a few months ago that the Administration had spent up to $40 million on these agreements, an average of more than $130,000 per deportee.

These costly agreements with third countries have been the Trump Administration’s immediate solution for deporting migrants who, for their own protection, cannot return to their places of origin. This was the case of Cubillos, who is from Bogotá. This truck driver worked for many years on Colombia’s southern border and received threats from armed groups operating in the area. When he arrived in the U.S. in 2018, he tried to apply for asylum. Due to the expiration of the legal time limits, the judge granted him a suspension of deportation. This guarantee only prevented his return to Colombia, but not his deportation to another nation willing to receive him.

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The Colombian man maintains that his application was still within the deadline, but that didn’t stop ICE’s plans. “From Jacksonville they took me to Louisiana. There they told me they were going to give me the yellow fever vaccine because they were going to send me to Angola, but I assumed it was just pressure and a mind game. Until the 13th [of April] they took me out and put me in some cells at the Alexandria airport, and that’s when I found out they were going to send me to the Congo.”

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The deported South Americans have been staying at a hotel in Kinshasa since Friday and have received support from the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN agency, including food and medical care. The Colombians interviewed for this story said that a Congolese official told them the government would process temporary visas for them and that they might even issue longer permits if any of them planned to stay. Both of them—and they believe the others as well—want to return to their home countries as soon as possible.