The Trump administration has developed plans to spend up to $250 million allocated for foreign aid to finance the deportation and repatriation of people who previously arrived from active conflict zones, writes The Washington Post citing reviewed drafts of internal documents. The documents, which the publication has reviewed, state that more than 200,000 Ukrainians and 500,000 Haitians could be part of the "voluntary" deportation process.
While previous administrations supported the use of taxpayer funds for the voluntary repatriation of migrants, the proposal developed under President Donald Trump is unusual in that it includes people who fled from the most dangerous regions of the world, the publication notes. Additionally, it aims to bypass the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN-affiliated structure that typically assists in returning migrants to their home countries. The documents themselves state that the IOM does not support the return of people to any of the mentioned countries. Besides Ukrainians and Haitians, Afghans, Palestinians, Libyans, Sudanese, Syrians, and Yemenis are also mentioned.
Meanwhile, the State Department recommends refraining from traveling to Ukraine and Haiti, citing significant security risks, and international law states that refugees cannot be returned to their countries if they face threats to their life or freedom.
Critics of this proposal, including former government officials, stated that it is inhumane and contradicts the long-standing ideals of the USA that the Trump administration forces people seeking asylum to return to countries where they face the danger of being killed. They also raised the question of whether such a plan is a misuse of foreign aid funds, primarily intended to support refugees and their resettlement. "This money should be spent on refugee assistance programs, as Congress intended," said Anne Richard, a senior State Department official during the Obama administration.
The document drafts were called preliminary, and an administration representative called them "outdated." Nevertheless, last week, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department signed an agreement that details the same process and includes the amount of $250 million, although the document did not specify nationalities.
The Biden administration first granted temporary protected status to Ukrainians in 2022, after Russia started the war. Haitians have had temporary protected status since 2010, when a devastating earthquake struck the country, claiming thousands of lives, and this status has been repeatedly extended due to ongoing security issues and instability. "Resetting" these guarantees became another controversial method of removing migrants and other foreign nationals from the USA, including through forced deportation and deportation of people to countries that are not their home.
In the case of Ukraine, American diplomats in January urged officials in Kyiv to accept not only their citizens deported from the USA but also potentially accept an indefinite number of deportees who are citizens of other countries.
Photo: AP