Liberia has received its first deportation flight from the United States, part of an agreement under which the West African nation will accept up to 1,200 third-country nationals deported from the US over the course of a year. The arrangement forms part of the Trump administration's wider push to expand deportations to countries beyond migrants' countries of origin, relying on third-party nations willing to take in foreign nationals the US wishes to remove.

The initial flight, which arrived on Thursday, had been expected to carry around 20 deportees, but instead brought mostly Latin American nationals, including people from Venezuela, Cuba and Colombia, according to Liberian Information Minister Jerolinmek Piah, speaking to Reuters. Further details of the arrivals were not fully specified in the report.