The Washington Post reports:

The U.S. diplomat arrived in West Africa in mid-June with little fanfare, hopscotching along the Atlantic coastline for scheduled visits with senior government officials in the Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Togo and Gabon, whose president greeted him inside an opulent seaside palace.

The American, a career State Department official named Christian Ehrhardt, was an unlikely diplomatic VIP. For nearly two decades, he served as an officer in the agency’s security branch, focusing on embassy protection, before being summoned to Washington last year to lead a new initiative — the Office of Remigration.

Since then, Ehrhardt, 41, has crisscrossed Africa, trying to persuade the continent’s leaders to accept flights full of people deported from the United States even though the migrants are not their own citizens. These “third country” deportation deals, a controversial innovation of the second Trump administration, have become a central part of the president’s hard-line approach to immigration, and they’re negotiated by the office Ehrhardt now oversees.

He has been making rapid progress. The Trump administration has authorized or pledged at least $410 million to facilitate agreements with 31 countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America, as of the end of June, according to internal government records reviewed by The Washington Post. The documents, which have not been previously reported, provide the most comprehensive picture to date of the Trump administration’s fast-growing third-country network.

Under the arrangements, the U.S. has expelled migrants to countries across the globe where they have no previous connection. Early deals included flights to Costa Rica carrying migrants from China, Russia, Iran and Afghanistan and a flight to the tiny African kingdom of Eswatini with migrants from Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and Jamaica.

The agreements have been secured under the orders of Stephen Miller, a long-standing aide to the president who now serves as White House deputy chief of staff. Current and former officials say that Miller, known for his relentless anti-immigration focus, has been able to push key appointments at the State Department that have allowed him to overrule other foreign policy objectives in his goal of achieving more deportations. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports:

Two men deported to Equatorial Guinea by the Trump administration were hooded, bound, beaten with guns and shoved down a flight of stairs recently by police officers at a remote hotel where immigrants are being held indefinitely, according to witnesses and lawyers.

The deportees said the beatings and subsequent arrests were intended to stop them from telling the outside world about the deteriorating conditions and growing violence inside the hotel, which has become a de facto prison for 29 men and women from different countries.

Experts and human rights advocates predicted such abuse after the Trump administration began deporting people to authoritarian countries where they had no ties or, in many cases, legal rights. Equatorial Guinea, like other countries cooperating with the U.S. deportation program, is notorious for human rights violations, including torture and arbitrary arrest, according to the State Department.

Equatorial Guinea, a small autocracy on Africa’s western coast, is one of many countries that have agreed to accept immigrants deported from the United States. With no legal status in the country, the deportees are being held in the Hotel Bamy — a dilapidated building on the outskirts of the city of Malabo. Armed police officers stand guard 24 hours a day and frequently harass and intimidate people there with impunity, deportees said. [Continue reading…]