‘We cannot leave’: Deported men describe being sent to Central African Republic under Trump crackdown
A Cuban immigrant who had been living and working in Florida is now in the Central African Republic, a country he said he had never heard of, after the Trump administration sent him and dozens of other deportees to one of the world’s most unstable nations.
Yasmany Moreno de Armas, 31, said he learned only after arriving in late July that he was being sent to the Central African Republic. He and the others aboard the flight came from around the globe, including Ecuador, Honduras, Serbia, Russia and Vietnam.
“We cannot leave, we don’t have documents and we’re suffering and missing our families, in a continent we don’t know,” Moreno de Armas told CBS News in Spanish from a building in Bangui, the capital, where the deportees are staying.
The Central African Republic is among the poorest countries on earth. Years of armed conflict, political instability and the presence of Russian mercenaries have made it one of the most dangerous, with the State Department’s Level 4 advisory warning Americans not to travel there.
It is also one of more than 30 countries the U.S. government has persuaded to accept third-country deportees arrested during President Trump’s large-scale crackdown on illegal immigration. That list includes a growing number of African nations, many of which face conflict, repression or serious human rights concerns.
Zena Gebrgzabher, a 39-year-old Eritrean native, is also stranded there after being removed from the United States. His wife and their 5-year-old son, both American citizens, remain in Maryland, where Gebrgzabher worked as a truck driver.
“I miss my family,” he said during a video call. “My son. He asked like every day to my wife, ‘(where) is my daddy?’”
His wife, Yrgalem Gehrehiwet, called the deportation unfair and inhumane. She said their son Nathan has struggled with his father’s absence, though she has not told him what happened.
“More than us because he loves his dad,” she told CBS News.
Gebrgzabher’s case shows how the administration has used legal loopholes to send protected migrants elsewhere. In 2017, an immigration judge found him eligible for protection under the Convention Against Torture and barred his deportation to Eritrea. But that protection did not prevent the U.S. from sending him to a third country.
Court records show Gebrgzabher was denied asylum because he had served as a checkpoint guard in the Eritrean military. Judges acknowledged he was forcibly conscripted at 18 but said his role had impeded the escape of political prisoners. He said he never harmed or arrested anyone. After overstaying leave, he was imprisoned and later fled the country, eventually seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Moreno de Armas’s path was different but equally tangled. He had been imprisoned in Cuba after his first attempt to leave the island. After making it to Florida by boat in September 2016, he was paroled into the U.S. under the now-defunct “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” policy. His application for a green card under the Cuban Adjustment Act was denied because he filed after his parole had expired.
With no legal status, he was arrested by immigration officials in May 2025 and spent roughly a year in ICE custody before his deportation to Africa.
CBS News could not find any criminal record for either man beyond traffic and immigration violations. Their experiences fit the broader pattern of the administration’s push to deport migrants whose home countries limit U.S. returns, or who have protections that keep them out of their native countries.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to questions about the arrangement with the Central African Republic, including what the country receives in exchange for accepting deportees.
The use of third-country agreements has drawn growing criticism from immigration advocates and legal experts, who say the deals can bypass legal protections and leave migrants in a stateless-like limbo. The administration has defended the agreements as a tool to enforce immigration law and deter future border crossings.
Both men described being effectively trapped in a nation whose language they do not speak, with no ties and no clear way out.
“If you’re going to be deported, it should be to your home country, not to another country where you don’t know the culture,” Moreno de Armas said.