Cuban Deportee Recounts Painful ICE Flight to Liberia With 24 Others
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Aug 30
Cuban Deportee Recounts Painful ICE Flight to Liberia With 24 Others
3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Aug 30
Summary
Leonardo Sánchez, 49, said ICE agents kept him shackled for hours on a flight from Louisiana to Liberia despite severe abdominal injuries from past surgeries, leaving him crying in pain and unable to use the toilet.
More than two dozen deportees were on the flight, and several said they were not told their destination until one detainee saw “Liberia” on paperwork held by an ICE official before departure.
Six other detainees backed Sánchez’s account, describing a chaotic expulsion in which passengers panicked as they realized they were being sent to West Africa.
The accounts add detail to the Trump administration’s expanding use of third-country deportations, after a Venezuelan man was removed from Texas to Liberia earlier this week despite protection from return to Venezuela.