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COLONIZE THEN, DEPORT NOW  
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Jonathan Ort
September 9, 2025
Africa is a Country
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_ Trump’s deportation regime revives a colonial blueprint first
drafted by the American Colonization Society, when Black lives were
exiled to Africa to safeguard a white republic. _

, Jonathan Ort

 

Robert Goldsborough, a Maryland lawmaker, rose one Friday early in
1826 to clinch what he fancied a good deal for his state. Goldsborough
informed his fellow legislators that a private entity had “incurred
an expense in a late deportation of 150 free people of color to the
African settlement in Liberia.” Given that “twenty of those free
people of colour were from the state of Maryland,” he directed the
state’s treasury
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reimburse the cost of their removal.

The recipient: the American Colonization Society (ACS). It was the
ACS, composed of prominent white men, that founded Liberia as a colony
where the US could send its free Black populace. The self-styled
colonization movement encompassed both abolitionists and enslavers.
Many were ministers zealous to evangelize and “redeem” Africa.
While the ACS disavowed any official position on slavery, its members
insisted that free Black people had no place in their body politic.

Flash forward two centuries: Donald Trump is using mass deportation to
plunge the US into a tin-pot fascist police state. Jamelle Bouie
has likened
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horrors we now witness daily
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agents abducting Black and brown people from restaurants and
courthouses, street corners and schools—to the Fugitive Slave Act
of 1850
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The comparison is right, but the roots of this catastrophic moment
reach even farther back. Mass deportation follows the anti-Black
blueprint that white colonizationists had laid a generation before.

To be sure, Black emigrants, born both enslaved and free, came to
Liberia seeking liberation. Many settlers embraced the proposition of
returning to their ancestral homeland. Liberia’s motto remains
“The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here.” But if Liberia promised
escape from slavery and racism, the promise would be betrayed.

Though the ACS claimed no one would leave against their will, the
choice was burdened. The ubiquity of American racism made emigration
plausible in the first place. Some enslavers forced families to
purchase their freedom on the condition that they sail for Africa
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Many Black abolitionists, Frederick Douglass
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among them, denounced the ACS. Long before Kristi Noem would dangle a
poisoned offer of cash
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incentivize “self-deportation,” colonizationists manufactured the
illusion of Black people’s consent.

The colonization movement enveloped Washington, counting legislators,
judges, and presidents among its ranks. Those powerbrokers advanced
ACS interests from public office. Then President James Monroe, an
enslaver
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ardent colonizationist, became the namesake for Liberia’s capital,
Monrovia, by securing funds
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fledgling colony. Long before contractors would build
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concentration camp in the Everglades, the ACS used federal patronage
for its eliminationist ends.

Goldsborough noted that of the 150 emigrants who had arrived in
Liberia, 20 “were from the state of Maryland.” The remark admitted
that the newest Liberians had spent their lives in his state.
Goldsborough nevertheless urged their removal. Long before the White
House would berate journalists
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recognizing that Kilmar Ábrego García is a “Maryland man,” the
ACS avowed that only white settlers could call the US their own.

The ACS seized a stretch of African coastline, making no effort to
bring emigrants where their ancestors had been enslaved. After the
trade of enslaved Africans was outlawed, American warships took to
patrolling the Atlantic. Upon intercepting slave ships, the navy
“returned” the captives aboard to Liberia—though most had been
shackled along the Congo Basin. The term “Congo” now signifies all
those who came, no matter their birthplace, to Liberia. The settlers
would, in turn, establish Liberia as Africa’s first Black republic
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a paradox in that the new nation colonized the land
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its indigenous peoples
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Today’s White House is disappearing detainees to “third
countries,” a euphemism for nations where they have never set
foot—and often face grave danger. Most notorious is El Salvador,
whose right-wing dictator Nayib Bukele boasts a hideous pact with
Trump. But the pair’s homegrown gulags are only one thread in an
unfolding global plot.

Most countries facing pressure to take American detainees are African.
In June, the US Supreme Court authorized
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expulsion of eight detainees, who had endured months inside a shipping
container in Djibouti, to South Sudan
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followed. The White House is eyeing Liberia—alongside Gabon,
Guinea-Bissau, Libya, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, and Uganda—for
similar designs
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(Honduras [[link removed]] and Palau
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also under duress.)

True to the infamous slur
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Trump uttered in his first term, one African nation deserves “the
worst of the worst
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as much as any other. While governments might ask favors
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holding detainees, the gutting of USAID has deprived
many, particularly Liberia
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of leverage. What’s more, a travel ban
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targets much of Africa—Afrikaner “refugees” exempted
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of course. Little surprise that Trump was bewildered
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Liberian President Joseph Boakai recently addressed him in English.
The White House, to quote Swazi activists, takes the continent for
“a dumping ground
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The US has no monopoly on perpetuating the global color line
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resemble Australia’s removal of migrants
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Papua New Guinea and Nauru. The United Kingdom still champions
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deportation, even after its misbegotten scheme to deport asylum
seekers [[link removed]] to Rwanda.
That is to say nothing of Israel’s reported efforts
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remove those who survive its genocide in Gaza to South Sudan—a
chilling echo of the Nazi “Madagascar Plan
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Rarely, however, is it grasped stateside that mass deportation is
neocolonial—much less that _colonial _implicates the US two
centuries ago. Goldsborough and his ilk deemed free Black people an
intolerable problem. They saw in Africa their salvation—the means,
Norfolk colonizationists had declared weeks before Goldsborough spoke,
of “putting away the whole of this black and menacing evil
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gradually, safely, and most happily, from our land.”

The continent likewise seals the promise that returned Trump to power:
deliver America from the migrant hordes that are “poisoning the
blood of our country
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who imperils the nation’s whiteness can be sent “back” to
Africa.

“We do not mean to go to Liberia,” Douglass proclaimed in 1849
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are made up to live here if we can, or die here if we must; so every
attempt to remove us will be, as it ought to be, labor lost.” His
words were prophetic.

Two hundred years after the ACS came into being, Liberia endures as a
sovereign republic, a diverse nation that represents freedom in all
its complexity. Black America has gone nowhere. The colonizationist
fantasy, to rule Liberia and to make America white, failed. So must
its latter-day heir.

JONATHAN ORT is pursuing a PhD in History at the University of
Chicago, where he focuses on Liberia.

*Not the continent with 55 countries

_AFRICA IS A COUNTRY_ offers a critical perspective on various
social, political, and cultural issues affecting Africa that push back
on continental legacies of colonialism and exploitation. Our editorial
viewpoint emphasizes the complexity and diversity of African
experiences, challenging stereotypes and simplistic narratives. Our
work highlights local voices and perspectives, focusing on
contemporary issues in politics, economics, and culture, as well as
the usable past. We often engage with broader global discourses while
remaining rooted in specific African contexts, advocating for nuanced
discussions that reflect the realities of life in Africa.

Unless otherwise noted, all the content on _Africa Is a Country_ is
published under a Creative Commons BY 4.0
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* Donald Trump
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* Deportation
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* colonialism
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* U.S. history
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* American Colonization Society
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* slavery
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* Racism
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