Trump admin exposed for massive deals with world’s most brutal leaders: report
Donald Trump's administration has seemingly changed tack with international diplomacy and struck deals with a series of the world's most brutal leaders, per a report.
Records from the White House, seen by the New York Times, show that American diplomats are straining to strike deals with countries across the world and have put everything on the negotiating table as a result. Included in the possible negotiations were offers to "pay foreign security forces, ease visa restrictions or tariffs, finance public health services, and even reconsider a country’s placement on U.S. watch lists," per the NYT team.
Part of the Trump admin's change has been on how they view immigration as a negotiating tool. The report, seen by Eileen Sullivan, Hamed Aleaziz, Megha Rajagopalan, and Pranav Baskar, notes that some countries could be swayed into making concessions to the US should they be given special treatment.
"The negotiations show how Mr. Trump has turned mass deportation, one of his signature domestic initiatives, into a central part of American foreign policy," they wrote. "The Trump administration has deported thousands of people to about a dozen countries, often to places where they have no ties.
"As mass detention in the United States becomes politically complicated, the administration is eager to cut more deals to deport migrants.
"Such arrangements are taking shape in particular in Africa, where Mr. Trump has ushered in a new style of diplomacy that prioritizes deal-making over enforcing human rights and promoting democracy. The policy is called 'America First in Africa.'
"The Trump administration is in talks, records show, to send migrants to the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, two countries where the judicial systems are dysfunctional and government forces have been linked to torture and forced disappearances."
Deals have reportedly already been struck with the leaders of Cameroon and Rwanda, while an arrangement with Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, and South Sudan is in the works.
Eswatini has a history of human rights abuses, while Equatorial Guinea is overseen by an autocratic state where torture is systemic.