Reports of US plans to deport migrants to Libya spotlight rights abuses

News that the US may be planning to deport migrants to Libya has been met with consternation by rights groups.

The Trump administration continues to expand its efforts to remove migrants to third-party countries, despite legal challenges. On Wednesday, a US judge ruled that migrants could not be deported without being given the opportunity to challenge it in court.

Libya's rival governments have also both said they would refuse to accept the deportees and the country's highly restrictive asylum procedures also raise questions about the deportees status on arrival.

Libya is a major transit hub for asylum seekers trying to reach Europe and each year, thousands attempt a dangerous Mediterranean crossing. An estimated 800,000 migrants are currently in Libya and their mistreatment has been widely documented.

A United Nations-backed, independent fact-finding mission in 2024 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.

Deterrent factor

Libya's brutal reputation for migrants may be part of the reason it appeals to Washington, says Camille Le Coz, Director of the Migration Policy Institute Europe.

"What's striking about the choice of Libya is that this is a country where the conditions are particularly challenging for refugees and other migrants.

"Many migrants end up in detention centres, centres that are managed by militia or the government, where they get tortured, where their families get blackmailed to secure their release. There's been repeatedly reports of mass graves, most recently in February, in different parts of the country. In 2024 International Organization for Migration reported that there'd been about 1,000 migrants who'd been killed in Libya, but we know the figures are likely to be much higher."

"This type of operation is expensive, it's difficult to set up, and so, we can speculate that it might be, you know, to show that if you get to the US you might be sent to this place that is extremely dangerous for migrant populations and that this may deter people from coming."

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.

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.