DHS deported migrants with court-ordered protections to Central African Republic on first operational third-country flight

A U.S. deportation flight carrying roughly two dozen migrants departed Louisiana late on June 11, 2026 and arrived Friday, June 12 in Bangui, Central African Republic — the first operational removal flight under the Trump administration's third-country deportation agreement with that country, an arrangement previously reported in outline on May 18, 2026. Those aboard included nationals of Iran, Jordan, Armenia, Turkey, Georgia, and Afghanistan. Immigration lawyers said at least three Iranian women and an elderly Syrian man had already secured U.S. immigration-court protection against removal to their home countries, based on findings that they faced credible fear of persecution on account of politics or religion.

Despite those protections, the individuals were scheduled for removal to a country with which they had no prior connection. Two of the Iranian women and the Syrian man obtained emergency court orders barring their removal, but the orders came only after the flight had already departed, according to their attorneys. The Central African Republic is one of at least nine African nations that has agreed to accept third-country deportees from the United States as part of a broader, often-secret expansion of removals to nearly two dozen countries not the deportees' own, which advocates describe as a mechanism to route around immigration-court rulings that bar direct return to a person's home country.

Updates

2026-07-20 — Individual case: Turkish national with CAT protection deported from Phoenix to Bangui [3]

Arizona Mirror reporting published July 20, 2026 detailed the experience of Yagiz Doruk Hallac, a 24-year-old Turkish national and member of the Alevi faith who had been granted U.S. Convention Against Torture protection by an immigration judge in 2023. Hallac was detained by ICE agents at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in late February 2026 while visiting friends in Arizona and was held at the Florence Correctional Facility. His attorney, Mo Goldman, filed a temporary restraining order on March 17 to block third-country removal; a federal judge denied it on June 11 and asked Goldman to amend it — but Hallac was deported that night, before the amendment could be filed. Goldman and Hallac's family did not learn of the deportation until after his arrival in Bangui. Central African Republic authorities initially took Hallac's passport and confined him to a government apartment; after it was returned, he booked a flight to Argentina. ICE did not respond to the Mirror's questions about Hallac's deportation; Goldman recounted that a Phoenix ICE agent he reached was unfamiliar with the Central African Republic. Hallac had two parking tickets and no criminal history.