CAIRO (news agencies) — Reports of plans to deport migrants from the U.S. to Libya, a country with a documented history of serious human rights violations and abuse of migrants, have spotlighted the difficulties they face in the lawless North African nation.
Migrants in Libya are routinely arbitrarily detained and placed in squalid detention centers where they are subjected to extortion, abuse, rape and killings.
A U.N.-backed, independent fact-finding mission found evidence that crimes against humanity had been committed against migrants in Libya. Victims were subjected to enslavement, forced disappearance, torture and murder, among other crimes, the investigators found. Dead migrants have been found in mass graves across the country, while tens of thousands of others have drowned trying to escape Libya on smugglers’ boats.
“It’s hell on earth for migrants,” said Tarek Megerisi, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
“All they will have are different forms of abuse — if they are lucky enough, they will end up on a rickety boat in the Mediterranean,” added Megerisi, who is Libyan.
Libya plunged into chaos after a 2011 NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The country split, with rival administrations in the east and west backed by a web of rogue militias.
“Their main business model is smuggling, and people smuggling is a major part of that,” Megerisi said.
Both the Tripoli-based government of Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah and its rival administration in eastern Libya controlled by military commander Khalifa Hifter have denied signing a deportation deal with the Trump administration.
Some 800,000 migrants seeking work or who have fled war in their home countries live in Libya, according to the International Organization for Migration. Each year, thousands attempt the dangerous Mediterranean crossing from the North African country to Europe.
Despite documented abuses in Libya, the European Union and Italy have for years funded, trained and equipped Libyan groups, including the coast guard, to stop migrants from reaching European shores.
Migrants intercepted at sea or elsewhere in Libya are subject to arbitrary detention and extortion in centers run by armed groups that are either affiliated with state authorities or are autonomous, said Mehdi Ben Youssef, program lead at Lawyers for Justice in Libya. Those groups extort migrants for money in exchange for release — only for them to be captured again by another armed group, detained and tortured.
Ben Youssef said those who could be deported from the U.S. to Libya “would be highly exposed to cycles of crimes.”
In detention centers, migrants are tortured and kept in “horrific conditions,” lacking legal representation and proper access to water and health care, Ben Youssef said. Families outside Libya are blackmailed with cellphone videos of their relatives being tortured to pay varying sums for their release — payments that often offer no real guarantee of freedom.
A 2019 media investigation found that huge sums of EU funds meant to improve conditions for migrants ended up in the hands of militiamen, traffickers and coast guard members who exploited migrants in this cycle of catch and release.
Last month, Libya’s Internal Security Agency ordered 10 international aid organizations to suspend operations and close offices, accusing the groups of violating local laws by providing aid to African migrants, touting a “replacement” conspiracy theory and resulting in more targeting of Black migrants.
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