The Bahamas on Thursday said it had rejected a proposal from the incoming Trump administration to take in deported migrants, as the next US president seeks to follow up on pledges to slash immigration.
Donald Trump’s team has drawn up a list of countries to which it wants to deport migrants when their home countries refuse to accept them, according to NBC News.
But the Bahamas — an island nation set in the Atlantic Ocean — said it had “reviewed and firmly rejected” the plan.
Prime Minister Philip Davis’s office said his government had received a proposal from the Trump transition team “to accept deportation flights of migrants from other countries.”
“Since the Prime Minister’s rejection of this proposal, there has been no further engagement or discussions with the Trump transition team,” the statement added.
Other countries that Trump is considering include Turks and Caicos, Panama and Grenada, sources told NBC.
The president-elect based his successful White House run on vicious anti-migrant rhetoric, blaming migrants for a supposed national crime wave and promising to carry out mass deportations.
Trump’s team made no immediate comment Thursday on the Bahamas’ rejection, which appeared to reveal one part of how he plans to enact radical migration reform when in office.
– ‘Invasion’ –
The deportation plan could mean that migrants are permanently displaced in countries to which they have no links.
It is not clear if the migrants would be allowed to work — or what pressure Trump may apply to get countries to agree, NBC reported.
The US government has struggled for years to manage its southern border with Mexico, and Trump on the campaign trail targeted concerns by claiming an “invasion” is underway by migrants he says will rape and murder Americans.
At rallies, he repeatedly railed against undocumented immigrants, attacking those who “poison the blood” of the United States.
He has vowed to tackle migrant gangs using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — which allows the federal government to round up and deport foreigners belonging to enemy countries.
Trump also promoted the fictitious story that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating residents’ pets.
The incoming president last month said he was bringing back hardline immigration official Tom Homan to oversee the country’s borders.
Homan led immigration enforcement during part of Trump’s first administration.
A British plan to deport its asylum seekers to Rwanda was dropped earlier this year when the Labour Party took power under Keir Starmer after ousting the Conservatives.
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