In a controversial move that has drawn sharp criticism from immigration advocates, the Trump administration has deported a Moroccan woman with a valid US immigration protection order to Cameroon—a country where she had no connections and where homosexuality remains criminalized.
Farah, a 21-year-old gay woman who fled Morocco after facing violent persecution from her family, endured a harrowing journey through six countries before reaching the US border in early 2025. Despite receiving a judicial protection order in August that explicitly prohibited her deportation to Morocco due to life-threatening risks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials transported her to Cameroon just three days before her scheduled release hearing.
Her case represents one of dozens confirmed instances where migrants with legal protection from US immigration judges have been deported to third countries under the administration’s “third-country agreements” with African nations. According to legal representatives, all nine deportees on the January flight to Cameroon possessed similar protection orders.
Legal experts have condemned the practice as a dangerous loophole that violates both US immigration laws and international treaties. Alma David, an immigration lawyer with Novo Legal Group, stated: “By deporting them to Cameroon, and giving them no opportunity to contest being sent to a country whose government hoped to quietly send them back to the very countries where they face grave danger, the US not only violated their due process rights but our own immigration laws.”
The Department of Homeland Security defended the actions, asserting: “We are applying the law as written. If a judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period.”
Currently, at least seven African nations—including Cameroon, South Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, and Equatorial Guinea—have entered into agreements with the US to accept deported third-country nationals. Senate Foreign Relations Committee documents reveal the administration has spent approximately $40 million to deport about 300 migrants to countries other than their own.
Farah, now back in Morocco and living in hiding, expressed her disillusionment: “What was done to me was unfair. A normal deportation would have been fair, but to go through so much and lose so much, only to be deported in such a way, is cruel.”