US deports Iranian activist to Central African Republic despite its own ‘do not travel’ warning

The Trump administration has carried out a deportation flight to the Central African Republic (CAR), sending roughly two dozen migrants from Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey and Georgia to a country the US State Department warns its own citizens not to visit “for any reason”. Among those on board was an Iranian pro-democracy activist who had been granted “withholding of removal” by an American immigration court — a legal shield against return to a place of likely torture or persecution. Her lawyer, Emily Trostle, described the transfer as “super dangerous”, noting that the activist had no prior connection to the impoverished, conflict-ridden nation.

Viewed from Washington, the operation marks an escalation of the administration’s “third-country” deportation strategy, which seeks to expel migrants to states willing to accept them when their countries of origin refuse or are deemed unsafe. CAR recently concluded an agreement with the United States to receive such deportees, a deal that has drawn little public scrutiny. Lawyers and advocacy groups say at least two other Iranian women — one a Christian convert, the other a democracy campaigner — remain at risk of being sent to the same destination, despite court orders that previously shielded them. The Iranian American Legal Defense Fund has warned that returning any of these individuals to Iran would expose them to severe harm, but rerouting them to CAR, where armed groups, landmines and rampant criminality are endemic, amounts to what one advocate called a “death sentence”.

International reaction has been sharp. Persian-language media have highlighted the plight of the Iranian women, framing the deportations as a betrayal of asylum seekers who fled a regime Washington itself labels a “terrorist state”. Russian and Indonesian outlets have focused on the human-rights controversy, with Kommersant noting that a Turkish political refugee was also on the manifest, and Tribunnews describing the policy as opaque and internationally condemned. Analysts in London point out that the use of CAR — a nation with a Level 4 travel advisory and a history of coups and militia violence — sets a new precedent, effectively outsourcing the risk of harm to a third country while bypassing domestic legal protections.

The flight, which departed Louisiana on Thursday night and arrived in Bangui on Friday, is unlikely to be the last. With the US immigration system under sustained pressure and diplomatic relations with Iran severed, the administration appears determined to expand the list of third-country destinations, regardless of security conditions. For the individuals still awaiting their fate in American detention, the question is not whether they will be removed, but to which fragile state they will be dispatched next.