By Pastor Herrera Macurán
Horizonte Cubano News
August 23, 2026
Twenty migrants were recently deported from the United States to Liberia. Among them were Cubans, Venezuelans, Colombians and other nationals.
For many Americans, Liberia may appear to be simply another distant country willing to receive deportees from the United States.
But Liberia is not just another country in the history of the United States.
Its relationship with America is extraordinary.
And uncomfortable.
To understand why sending migrants there today deserves particular scrutiny, Americans should first understand how Liberia came into existence.
Liberia Was Born From America’s Racial Conflict
In 1816, white Americans established the American Colonization Society.
Its objective was to establish settlements in Africa for free Black Americans.
Its supporters represented a complicated coalition. Some opposed slavery and believed Black Americans could achieve greater freedom in Africa. Others were slaveholders or white Americans who simply did not want free Black people becoming a permanent part of American society.
That contradiction is essential to understanding Liberia’s origins.
Behind much of the colonization movement was a disturbing proposition:
America could address part of its racial problem by sending Black people somewhere else.
The Land That Became Liberia
Representatives of the American Colonization Society eventually searched the West African coast for territory.
In 1821, representatives obtained territory around Cape Mesurado from local African leaders.
This history should not be romanticized as a simple peaceful real-estate transaction. Historical accounts describe coercive circumstances surrounding the acquisition of territory.
Black settlers from the United States subsequently established themselves there.
The colony became Liberia — a name derived from liberty.
Its capital became Monrovia, named in honor of American President James Monroe, an important supporter of colonization.
An African Republic With an American Imprint
Liberia declared its independence in 1847.
Its political institutions were strongly influenced by those of the United States.
Even Liberia’s flag immediately reminds an American observer of the Stars and Stripes.
English became its official language.
This was not accidental.
Americo-Liberian settlers carried American political, religious and cultural traditions across the Atlantic.
But another part of this history must never be forgotten.
Indigenous Africans were already there.
Liberia was not an empty territory waiting for Americans.
The creation of the new republic produced profound tensions between Americo-Liberian settlers and indigenous communities — divisions whose consequences lasted for generations.
And Then Came Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln did not create Liberia.
By the time Lincoln became president in 1861, Liberia had already been an independent republic for fourteen years.
But Lincoln’s relationship with colonization deserves examination.
During the early part of his presidency, Lincoln supported voluntary colonization initiatives encouraging some Black Americans to emigrate outside the United States.
In 1862, he spoke directly with a delegation of Black Americans about colonization abroad.
Liberia was among the destinations discussed during that period.
History subsequently moved in another direction.
Black Americans overwhelmingly remained Americans.
They fought for citizenship.
They fought in the Civil War.
They fought against segregation.
They fought for voting rights.
They fought to force America to honor the promises contained in its own Constitution.
And in 1862, during Lincoln’s presidency, the United States formally recognized the Republic of Liberia.
Now America Is Sending People to Liberia Again
More than two centuries after the first American colonization project, aircraft carrying deportees from the United States are again arriving in Liberia.
The circumstances are obviously different.
The people being sent today are not African Americans participating in the nineteenth-century colonization movement.
They are migrants subject to contemporary immigration enforcement.
We should not pretend the two policies are identical.
They are not.
But history gives the destination an extraordinary symbolism.
America once looked across the Atlantic and saw Liberia as a place where people it did not want to incorporate fully into American society could be relocated.
Today America is again using Liberia as a destination for people it has decided must leave the United States.
That historical echo deserves attention.
Where Does Deportation End and Banishment Begin?
There is another historical comparison worth considering.
Colonial powers frequently dealt with inconvenient people by removing them far from the societies in which they lived.
Spain used distant imprisonment within its colonial system.
Cubans who challenged Spanish colonial authority could find themselves imprisoned thousands of miles from their homeland, including in North African territories under Spanish control.
Distance itself became part of the punishment.
Remove the person.
Separate him from family.
Separate him from community.
Put an ocean between the individual and everything familiar.
Modern American immigration enforcement operates under an entirely different legal and constitutional framework.
But that history should make us especially cautious when deportation begins to resemble geographical banishment.
“Mami, Estoy en África”
That is why four words reportedly spoken by Cuban deportee Carlos Rodríguez López to his American wife are so powerful:
“Mami, estoy en África.”
He was not describing a vacation.
He was describing the astonishing reality that a Cuban man with an American wife and daughter had been transported by the United States government to West Africa.
According to published reports, Rodríguez López had a criminal history and a final removal order.
Those facts matter.
We should not hide them.
But they still do not answer another question:
Why Liberia?
What permanent connection does he have to that country?
Does he have family there?
What legal status will he possess?
Can he work?
Can his family visit or join him?
Is he free to move?
Can he leave Liberia?
What happens when the agreement under which he was received expires?
What prevents another deportation from Liberia to somewhere else?
The American public deserves answers.
Four Cubans Are Already There
Rodríguez López is not alone.
Published reports identify four Cuban nationals among those transferred to Liberia:
Carlos Rodríguez López
Leonardo Sánchez
Emilio Destrade
Darwin Hernández
They were part of the first group of 20 deportees transferred from the United States to Liberia.
This means we are no longer debating a hypothetical policy.
It is happening.
People have been transported.
Families have been separated.
And additional deportations could follow.
Congress should know exactly how this arrangement works.
History Gives Us a Warning
We should always be careful with government power because extraordinary measures rarely arrive announcing themselves as precedents.
Every policy begins with a category of people officials say deserves it.
That is why Americans should resist saying:
It does not matter because it is happening to somebody else.
Today the affected person may be a Cuban with a final removal order.
Tomorrow it may be another category of noncitizen.
That does not mean the United States government is preparing to deport Black American citizens to Liberia.
There is no evidence of such a plan, and American citizens possess fundamentally different constitutional and legal protections.
But Liberia’s history permits us to ask a deliberately uncomfortable question:
How far are Americans willing to allow the logic of banishment to travel?
Government power should have limits before those limits are tested.
Black Americans Should Remember Liberia’s History
Liberia’s history deserves particular attention from Black Americans.
The country is connected directly to one of the most uncomfortable propositions in American racial history:
That the solution to America’s racial problem might be removing Black people from America rather than guaranteeing them equality within America.
Many Black Americans rejected that proposition.
They understood something fundamental.
America was their country too.
The answer to discrimination was citizenship.
The answer to racism was equality.
The answer was not an ocean voyage.
That lesson should remain alive.
Liberia Is a Sovereign African Nation — Not America’s Deportation Colony
There is another side to this story that Americans should respect.
Liberia today is an independent African republic.
It is not American territory.
It is not an American colony.
And Liberians are not simply custodians for people Washington does not want.
The Liberian government possesses sovereign authority to enter agreements with other governments.
But Liberian citizens also deserve transparency concerning agreements made in their name.
How many deportees will arrive?
What will the United States pay?
Who provides housing?
Who provides healthcare?
What legal status will these individuals receive?
Can they work?
How long will they remain?
Those are questions Liberians have every right to ask as well.
Congress Must Obtain the Agreement
The arrangement with Liberia deserves congressional scrutiny.
Congress should obtain the agreement.
Hold hearings.
Question the Department of Homeland Security.
Question the Department of State.
Determine how individuals are selected.
Determine what protections exist.
Determine what happens after they arrive.
Determine how much American taxpayers are paying.
And determine whether third-country deportation is becoming a permanent component of American immigration policy.
Oversight is not obstruction.
It is Congress doing its constitutional job.
America Should Learn From Its Own History
Liberia teaches an extraordinary American lesson.
Two hundred years ago, part of America’s political establishment believed an ocean could help solve a domestic political problem.
Send people somewhere else.
Put distance between the problem and America.
History demonstrated the profound limitations and injustices embedded in that idea.
America should therefore be particularly careful when a modern government again begins addressing difficult human problems by putting unwanted people on airplanes bound for distant countries.
The comparison is not exact.
The law is different.
The people are different.
The century is different.
But history does not need to repeat itself perfectly to warn us.
Sometimes it merely rhymes.
And when an American citizen receives a call from her Cuban husband and hears:
“Mami, estoy en África,”
perhaps America should remember why Liberia occupies such a distinctive place in our history.
And perhaps we should ask whether transporting people thousands of miles away is becoming a substitute for confronting difficult immigration problems here at home.
Liberia should not become America’s deportation colony.
And distance should never become a substitute for due process, transparency and accountability.
Pastor Herrera Macurán is the founder of Horizonte Cubano News. The views expressed in this article are those of the author.