HRW slams Trump’s plan to forcibly transfer migrants to Libya

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has condemned the United States’ plan to “forcibly transfer” migrants to Libya where “inhumane detention conditions are well-documented, including torture, ill-treatment, sexual assault, and unlawful killings.”

In a statement issued on Friday, the rights watchdog said the US plan is a “dangerous step resembling previous European cooperation with Libyan authorities on migration,” which could make “Washington complicit in serious abuses against migrants.”

“It is dystopian to strong-arm a fractured country like Libya with a well-documented history of horrific detention conditions by unaccountable armed groups to take in more detainees,” said Hanan Salah, associate Middle East and North Africa director at HRW. “Libya’s ill-treatment of migrants is notorious, its detention centers are hellholes, and refugees have nowhere to turn for protection.”

“Expelling people to countries known to have appalling detention conditions shows the Trump administration’s utter disregard for due process,” Salah said. “Expelling people to Libya would raise the question of whether there is any country on earth where the Trump administration would not send someone.”

HRW has criticised the European Union and member states, accusing them of being “complicit in serious violations against migrants and asylum seekers intercepted at sea and sent back to Libya.”

Their continued cooperation with abusive and dangerous Libyan Coast Guard forces, providing supplies, technical support, and aerial surveillance to help them intercept Europe-bound migrants at sea, has increased the crisis, it added.

“Migrants and asylum seekers who are returned to Libya by these abusive forces are detained arbitrarily and face the risk of serious harm.”

It warned that the US is moving in the same direction, following press reports of the imminent deportation of migrants from Texas to Libya.

According to reports, the migrants were transferred to a military airport awaiting deportation, but the decision was later reversed, and they were returned to detention centres.

US President Donald Trump denied knowledge of the plans, and a US court issued a ruling preventing the government from immediately carrying out deportations to Libya.

However, HRW emphasized that hesitation in implementing the decision does not necessarily mean a reversal of policy, pointing to the Trump administration’s record of carrying out mass deportations to countries such as El Salvador and Panama.

The report concluded with a clear message: “No government should be complicit in sending people to Libyan hell.”