KINSHASA: Spending five days cooped up in a hotel in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo is not quite what a group of Latin Americans expected when they sought asylum in the United States.
But their predicament is far from the worst of it: the men and women told AFP in late April that they arrived in Kinshasa after a 27-hour flight which they spent with their hands and feet shackled.
Gabriela, a 30-year-old Colombian sporting tattoos and clad like most of her fellow sufferers in a white T-shirt, summed up their plight.
“I didn´t want to go to Congo. I´m scared, I don´t know the language,” she said.
She only found out where they were headed the day before being expelled from the United States.
The DRC -- one of a number of African nations that have agreed to take in deported migrants -- is one of the world´s 15 poorest countries, thousands of kilometres from the Americas.
The first batch of deportees arrived in April in the central African country under a controversial US migration scheme to pack off undocumented foreign nationals to third countries.
Other destinations include Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Ghana, Rwanda and South Sudan.
The scheme has often been accompanied by US financial or logistical support.
Yet scant information is provided by the authorities in the host countries about the migrants´ fate once they arrive on their soil.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), which takes charge of them once they have obtained short-stay visas, told AFP it can offer “assisted voluntary return to migrants who request it”.
