Dozens of Kenyans were deported from the US to Kenya days before the inauguration of US President-elect Joe Biden.
The Trump Administration according to the Guardian, made a moves to deport the last batch of ‘African asylum seekers” before Biden takes over the reins of power on January 20.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Thursday last week deported the asylum seekers from Louisiana in a chartered plane bound for Nairobi.
On board were deportees to Kenya, Somali and Ethiopia.
Once in Nairobi, the rest of the deportees were put on commercial planes to their countries of origin.
Immigrant support activists say that ICE was acting proactively to execute Trump’s unpopular anti-immigrant rule as a “last kick”.
Since 2016 when Trump took office, he instituted the anti-immigration policies which have seen scores of African immigrants in the US deported.
In his four-year rule, African and Haitian immigrants have been a soft target.
Guardian further added that data by Witness at the Border indicate that ICE executed 1,008 deportations in 2020 across Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.
In his campaign trail just before the US Elections in November 2020, Biden promised to the reverse the stringent immigration and asylum laws imposed by Trump’s administration.
Deportations by ICE from their Louisiana holding base have been marred by controversy.
There have been reports of forcing detainees to sign documents waiving their legal hearings.
This comes with alleged beatings. For some, deportation trial has not been fair to them pitting immigration judges against the public.
In 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic struck the US hard, ICE came under scrutiny for implementing massive deportations.
This increased the number of coronavirus cases in at Alexandria airfield from which is the backbone of ICE operations.
On Thursday when the last batch of deportees were bundled into a chartered plane back home, there were 22 COVID-19 cases reported at the facility.
All the cases were detainees.