ICE deported Cuban asylum seeker to Central African Republic on 71-person flight without disclosing destination

On July 30, 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported Aristides Fernandez Garcia, a 37-year-old Cuban asylum seeker who had been held in immigration detention for seven months, on an Eastern Airlines charter flight that departed Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport in Texas carrying an estimated 71 people to third countries — more than any other known third-country removal flight to Africa. Fernandez Garcia said he and other passengers did not learn they were being sent to Africa until an armed guard remarked on it near the end of boarding; he said ICE gave him no clear answer when he asked where the plane was headed, and he learned the flight's destination only after it was underway, during a stop in another African country. He and other Latin American passengers said they were shackled and denied access to the lavatory during the more-than-21-hour flight, which also stopped in Sierra Leone and Ghana before Fernandez Garcia and others were forced off in Bangui, the Central African Republic's capital.

Fernandez Garcia was arrested by ICE in Miami on January 6, 2026, during an immigration court hearing, while he had an asylum claim pending. The flight was carried out under the Trump administration's third-country deportation program, which since June 2025 has sent migrants — including many holding U.S. immigration-court protections against removal — to countries with no connection to their cases. A South Florida immigration attorney not representing Fernandez Garcia said there is no legal basis for sending migrants to a country other than the one authorized in their immigration proceedings; the Central African Republic has no functioning asylum system, leaving deportees there in indefinite legal limbo.

DHS confirmed on the record that ICE arrested Fernandez Garcia in Miami on January 6, 2026 and removed him on July 30, saying it was "applying the law as written" and pursuing "the largest deportation operation in history." The agency did not dispute that Fernandez Garcia and other passengers were not told their destination in advance, and in a separate statement to the Tampa Bay Times said only that "when an individual is no longer in ICE custody then ICE will no longer be responsible for them." Miami immigration attorney Hector Diaz, who does not represent any of the deportees, called the situation "a clear abuse of humanitarian rights" that "raises severe due process abuses, along with very serious humanitarian concerns."

Independent reporting corroborated the shackling and lavatory-denial accounts: Mohamed Barry, another passenger on the same flight who continued on to Ghana, told The American Prospect that ICE-contracted guards refused to let detainees use the lavatory, tied at least two people into full-body restraints, and drank alcohol while supervising the flight — an account another, unnamed passenger on the flight confirmed. A month after landing, Fernandez Garcia remained confined to a guarded hotel in Bangui without a passport or clear next steps, sharing a room with another migrant and saying he still hoped to pursue his U.S. asylum claim.