Deported to Liberia, Immigrants Detail Harrowing U.S. Expulsion and ICE Abuse

Leonardo Sánchez cried out in agony for hours aboard the deportation flight from Louisiana to West Africa, he and six other detainees recounted.

He had been shackled at the wrists and ankles. A chain around his waist pressed into his severely protruding abdomen — the result of injuries and surgeries from years past that, according to doctors, left his intestines barely contained within his body.

Mr. Sánchez, a 49‑year‑old Cuban, pleaded with several Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents aboard the aircraft for medical assistance.

“I was in pain, crying like a child,” he said. However, the agents refused to remove his chains or permit him to use the restroom, he and other detainees reported. He was forced to relieve himself in his clothing.

Like many of the more than two dozen deportees on the flight, Mr. Sánchez said he was unaware of his destination. Several grew frantic when they suspected the plane was heading to Liberia after one of them glimpsed the word on a document held by an ICE official in Louisiana.

When some voiced protests, they were assaulted by agents, five deportees reported. Some were thrown to the ground or struck, several recounted. One displayed cuts on his wrists and bruises around his neck, which he said resulted from resisting boarding the plane. Another said some deportees were left shrieking in pain.

The planeload of deportees, which arrived in Liberia this month, constituted the first contingent of the 1,200 individuals the United States anticipates sending to the West African nation over the coming year. The agreement is one of the largest in an expanding series of deals the Trump administration has struck to relocate deportees—including individuals with court orders shielding them from removal—to distant nations where they have no connections.

In recent weeks, the White House has sought to broaden these so‑called third‑country deportation initiatives and increase the number of people expelled from the United States, a U.S. official said. In July, ICE arrests surged to nearly 50,000 individuals, and the administration has concentrated on removing people who have lived in the country for years under court orders that protect them from being sent back, another official noted.

The New York Times interviewed ten of the deportees on the Liberia flight, all of whom portrayed a harrowing journey that involved months of detention in the United States and a frantic 14‑hour removal to Africa, during which agents wrestled and shackled terrified detainees.

Several spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. All maintained that they experienced or observed what they described as abusive or violent treatment by ICE officials during their deportation or while in U.S. detention.

“They didn’t treat us like people, like human beings,” said Carlos Téllez‑Sanchez, a Venezuelan deportee expelled to Liberia. “They can say or do anything to you, and there’s nothing you can do.”

The White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department said in statements that the only deportees being sent to third countries are those who cannot be returned to their home nations or who refuse to return.

“As Secretary Rubio has said, we remain unwavering in our commitment to end illegal and mass immigration,” stated Tommy Pigott, a State Department spokesman.

When the flight landed in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, Mr. Sánchez, the Cuban national, and three others said they refused to disembark, fearing abandonment in an unfamiliar country. They reported being forced onto the tarmac by ICE officers who wrenched and twisted their handcuffs, pinned them to the ground and pressed their knees directly onto their necks.

Mr. Sánchez said the federal agents knocked him to the ground and knelt on his distended abdomen, leaving him in agony, his trousers still damp with urine. Other deportees began shouting, “‘You abuser! If he dies, it’s on you!’” Mr. Sánchez and three other deportees recounted.

The Department of Homeland Security stated that no detainees were denied access to a restroom, that Mr. Sánchez was examined and deemed fit to fly by medical staff, that his medical needs were addressed during the flight, and that agents did not kneel on or press his abdomen.

It did not address the deportees’ other allegations of abuse.

Crying in pain, Mr. Sánchez said he was carried back onto the flight in Liberia with the others. They were subsequently taken to Equatorial Guinea, one of at least 35 countries with which the United States has entered deportation agreements, most of them in Africa.

“Basically, they treated us like wild animals,” said Carlos Rodríguez, another Cuban national on the flight. “Like beasts.”

‘The Freezer’

Three of the deportees, including 21‑year‑old Paola Dos Santos, a Brazilian national deported to Liberia, said they endured “psychological torture” from ICE officials while detained in the United States.

Ms. Dos Santos, who said she was detained for 15 months across two separate U.S. facilities, recounted that detainees were routinely denied medical care, including pregnant women. One woman who begged for information about her son, who had been separated from her, had her hands and ankles bound together, Ms. Dos Santos said: “They tied her like cattle.”

The Department of Homeland Security said detainees receive “comprehensive medical care” from the moment they enter ICE custody, including dental, mental‑health services, and prenatal and postnatal care.

Some of the deportees said they were continually transferred from one facility to another, and sometimes held in detention centers where up to 50 people shared a single toilet. Many reported being confined for days in a painfully cold room without beds, which they called “the freezer.”

‘We’re Going to Shoot Off Your Feet’

Mr. Sánchez, the Cuban man writhing in pain on the Liberia flight, said he arrived in the United States in 2010 under the Cuban Adjustment Act and worked as a welder, fabricating windows and doors.

In 2018, he was stabbed and shot in the stomach during a robbery in Miami that left him in a coma for 40 days, he said. Doctors who examined photographs of his abdomen said they appeared consistent with his account of the incident.

In early 2025, he said he received a one‑year probation order after a traffic stop that resulted in a conviction for cocaine possession. He said he completed 40 hours of community service and paid a $3,200 fine. The Department of Homeland Security said Mr. Sánchez was a criminal who “received due process and was ordered removed from the United States” in May.

When the flight landed in Liberia, deportees said ICE agents called their names one by one to exit the plane, and that those who resisted were forcibly removed. Mr. Rodríguez, one of the Cubans, said four officers were on top of him at once.

Several deportees who resisted disembarking said they were persuaded to re‑board the plane after being told they would be returned to the United States.

Instead, they were taken to Equatorial Guinea, loaded into a van, left at a hotel and prevented from leaving. They are under constant surveillance by guards carrying automatic weapons, they said in phone interviews.

“They told us: ‘If you try to escape, we’re going to shoot off your feet,’ ” said Darwin Hernández, also from Cuba.

Doctors who reviewed photographs of Mr. Sánchez’s abdomen said his condition did not appear to be life‑threatening, but that the thin layer of grafted skin holding in his intestines was extremely fragile, vulnerable to injury and in need of surgical repair.

When he finally saw medical staff in Equatorial Guinea, Mr. Sánchez said, doctors there told him the country lacked the equipment needed to treat him. They gave him a simple painkiller, he said.

Life in Liberia

In Liberia, where most of the deportees were taken, Mr. Téllez‑Sanchez, the Venezuelan, is trying to make sense of his new surroundings.

He and a few others occasionally take short walks, leaving the partially constructed, three‑story hotel where they were placed by the Liberian government. Outside, more than half a dozen security guards and Liberian officials stand watch.

“They say we have freedom to move around, but I don’t feel free,” Mr. Téllez‑Sanchez said. “I’m not a criminal. I don’t deserve what has happened to me.”

Liberia said that none of the deportees it has accepted are criminals, and that they would be allowed to apply for residency in the country.

Officials from the International Organization for Migration, a U.N. agency, said in a statement that they had provided assistance to the deportees and would help send them back to their home countries or find “other available pathways.”

Many of the deportees are now trying to decide whether to settle in an unfamiliar African nation or return to countries where they fear persecution.

Mr. Téllez‑Sanchez, who fled Venezuela in 2019, said he hoped to be allowed back into the United States but was not overly optimistic: “Maybe it won’t be possible.”

For now, he said, he simply wants to see his family, including the newborn son he has yet to hold.

Mattathias Schwartz and Carielle Doe contributed reporting.

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