The west African country of Liberia said Saturday it would take in a Salvadoran man at the centre of a deportation row denounced by opponents of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.
Liberia's government said in a statement it would receive Kilmar Abrego Garcia "on a strictly humanitarian and temporary basis, following a formal request from the government of the United States of America".
The US government said in a court filing Friday it planned to deport Abrego Garcia to the "thriving democracy" of Liberia within a week.
Trump's government accuses him of being a violent MS-13 gang member involved in smuggling other undocumented migrants.
Inside El Salvador's 'Mega' Prison
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He was already wrongly deported to El Salvador in March, then sent back to the United States in June.
Liberia is the first country in Africa to agree to accept Abrego after the administration unsuccessfully floated Uganda, Eswatini and Ghana as options for a potential second deportation.
A lawyer for Abrego Garcia said the man had no connection to Liberia, and that floating that as a deportation destination was "cruel and unconstitutional".
The lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said Costa Rica was willing to take him in as a refugee.
Liberia said the decision to receive Abrego Garcia was arrived at "after extensive consultations" and tracked with its commitment to principles of "human dignity, international solidarity, and compassion in times of distress".
The country – which was founded to take in freed American slaves – noted its "longstanding friendship" with the United States, with which it would "continue to engage ... to ensure that all assurances and arrangements between the two countries are fully observed".
Did Trump post a photoshopped image of Kilmar Abrego Garcia's 'MS-13' tattoos?
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Abrego Garcia had been living in the United States under protected legal status since 2019, when a judge ruled he should not be deported because he could be harmed in his home country.
He then became one of more than 200 people sent to El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison in March as part of Trump's crackdown on undocumented migrants.
But Justice Department lawyers admitted that the Salvadoran had been wrongly deported due to an "administrative error."
Abrego Garcia was returned to US soil months later, only to be detained again in Tennessee on human smuggling charges, a separate case from the Maryland proceedings.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)
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