The president of Guinea-Bissau on Thursday said that the country would only take back its own citizens who are deported from the U.S., rejecting requests from the Trump administration to take in deported migrants whose home countries refuse them or are slow to accept them.
President Umaro Sissoco Embaló, one of five West African leaders who met with President Trump at the White House on Wednesday, said the president raised the issue of third countries taking in migrants but added that Trump didn’t specifically ask for the African nations to agree to accept deportees.
“He talked about that, but he didn’t ask us to take immigrants back in our country. Just to be clear on that,” Embaló said during an event at the Atlantic Council, in response to a question from a reporter from The Africa Report.
“If they are our citizen of Guinea-Bissau, if they are [legal] here, if they want to go back to Guinea-Bissau, of course they are going back home. But if they are another citizen, why we going [to take] them? No, our policy don’t accept that.”
The Wall Street Journal reported that ahead of the high-profile White House summit with African leaders, the State Department sent requests to each of the five countries to take in third-country migrants whose home countries refused or delayed accepting them.
The five leaders present at the summit included the presidents of Liberia, Senegal, Mauritania, Gabon and Guinea-Bissau.
At the meeting, Trump described making progress on “the safe third-country agreements.” It’s not entirely clear how the administration views the policy. The U.S. and Canada have a “safe-third-country” policy. The general definition of the term provides for a country to deport an asylum-seeker to a country the person has already transited through, given that the country is deemed safe and provides adequate protection.
Sitting with Trump at the lunch meeting was Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and the main force behind Trump’s deportation campaign. The Trump administration has deported approximately 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador, and in an agreement with Panama, the U.S. has deported more than 100 migrants from a variety of nations to that country.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the administration is seeking similar agreements with Libya, Rwanda, Benin, Eswatini, Moldova, Mongolia and Kosovo.
Legal challenges to the deportations have failed to block the Trump administration’s actions.
The White House and State Department did not immediately return a request for comment.
Embaló was the unofficial leader of the West African delegation and has developed a personal rapport with Trump. Embaló said he last met with Trump in Paris during the rededication of the Notre Dame Cathedral.
“He was there also in the cathedral of Paris, of course we talk about, about Africa — it was not the first time he was inviting me” to the U.S., Embaló said.
Describing his impressions of Trump, Embaló said he was straightforward in the meeting Wednesday.
“President Trump … he knows what he want, he said, ‘What I give you? What you give me?’ It’s the win-win partnership, this is for me, is important.”
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