Last year, Cuban immigrant Yasmany Moreno de Armas was working and living in Florida. He is now in the Central African Republic, after the Trump administration sent him and dozens of deportees to the deeply impoverished and conflict-torn nation. The 31-year-old said he only learned that the U.S. government was deporting him to Africa after he arrived there in late July, along with detainees from countries around the world, including Ecuador, Honduras, Serbia, Russia and Vietnam. “We cannot leave, we do not have documents and we are suffering and missing our families, in a continent we do not know.” Moreno de Armas told CBS News in Spanish via video call from inside a building in Bangui, the country’s capital, where the deportees have been living. When asked if he had ever heard of the Central African Republic before his deportation, he said “never.” The Central African Republic is one of the poorest countries in the world. The armed conflict, political instability and Russian mercenaries have also made it one of the most dangerous. The State Department is warning Americans through a Level 4 travel warning not to visit the country, citing widespread insecurity there. The landlocked nation is one of more than 30 countries that the U.S. government has convinced to accept third-country deportees arrested as part of President Trump’s large-scale crackdown on illegal immigration. The list includes a growing number of African countries, many of which are plagued by armed conflict, repressive governments and human rights abuses. Zena Gebrgzabher, 39, a native of Eritrea, is also stranded in the Central African Republic after being expelled from the United States. “I miss my family,” Gebrgzabher told CBS News via video call. “My son. He asked my wife like every day: ‘(where) is my dad?'” he added. Gebrgzabher’s wife and five-year-old son, both U.S. citizens, live in Maryland, where he said. He worked as a truck driver. Like Moreno de Armas, Gebrgzabher said he was not given any notice of his deportation to the Central African Republic nor allowed to contest it. Yrgalem Gehrehiwet called her husband’s deportation unjust and inhumane. She said her son, Nathan, has been particularly affected by his father’s absence, although she has refrained from telling him about Gebrgzabher’s situation. “More than us because he loves his father,” he told CBS News. CBS News was unable to find any criminal history for Moreno de Armas or Gebrgzabher, beyond traffic and immigration violations, such as entering the United States illegally. But both men’s cases do match the description of many of those the Trump administration seeks to deport to remote “third countries.” For the most part, the Trump administration has sought to use third-country deportation agreements to deport immigrants whose home countries, such as Cuba, reject or limit U.S. deportations or who have obtained legal protections in U.S. immigration courts that protect them from being returned to their home countries due to concerns about their safety. The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to questions about the men sent to the Central African Republic and the nature of its agreement with that country, including what it gets for accepting deportees from the United States. Moreno de Armas said he could be in danger in Cuba, as he was once imprisoned there after his first attempt to flee the communist-ruled island. Cuban government documents show that he was imprisoned for “illegal departure from national territory.” His second attempt was successful. U.S. government documents show he arrived in Florida by boat in September 2016 and was allowed to enter the U.S. under the legal “parole” authority that Cuban arrivals benefited from under the now-defunct “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” policy. He applied for a green card under the Cold War-era Cuban Adjustment Act but was denied because he applied after his parole expired. Lacking legal status, Moreno de Armas was arrested by immigration officials in May 2025 and spent about a year in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement before his deportation to Africa this summer. Gebrgzabher won his legal case in immigration court in 2017, when an immigration judge deemed him eligible for protection under the Convention Against Torture and barred his deportation to Eritrea. Court documents show Gebrgzabher was not granted asylum, a more permanent legal status, because he served as a checkpoint guard in the Eritrean military. Although judges noted that he was forcibly recruited when he was 18, they determined that he was ineligible for asylum because of a rule that disqualifies those who may have aided in the persecution of others. While he said he did not harm or arrest anyone passing through the checkpoint, judges said he prevented the escape of political prisoners. The documents indicate that Gebrgzabher was imprisoned by the Eritrean military after overstaying his leave and subsequently fled the country. He then traveled to the US-Mexico border, where he requested asylum at a port of entry. After he was granted protection under the Convention Against Torture, Gebrgzabher said he started a family and checked in with ICE regularly, without incident, until he was arrested during a date last year. While his protection prevented his deportation to Eritrea, it did not legally prevent officials from sending him to a third country such as the Central African Republic. Both men CBS News spoke to described being effectively stateless, trapped in a foreign nation where they don’t speak the language and lack ties or relatives. “If they are going to be deported, they should be to their country of origin, not to another country where they do not know the culture,” Moreno de Armas said. More from CBS News Go deeper with The Free Press in:
