A group of at least 90 Somalis and two Kenyans were deported Wednesday from the United States for unclear reasons.
The deportees who are thought to be the first set of Africans affected by U.S. President Donald Trump’s promise to crack down on illegal immigrants, arrived at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) about noon in Nairobi aboard Omni, an American charter airline, according to the Daily Nation.
The group of Somalis then continued their journey aboard a Juba Airways flight that left for Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, at 3 p.m. Eyewitnesses say the deportees were accompanied on all stages of their journey by security detail.
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Government spokesman Eric Kiraithe confirmed the arrival of the group but offered no reason for their deportation.
“I don’t have details of their deportation, but it is true there are 90 Somalis and two Kenyans who arrived at JKIA after deportation from the U.S.,” said Kiraithe.
The Mexican Wall
In an unrelated event, President Trump signed an executive order for work to begin on the construction of a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico also on Wednesday.
At the signing, President Trump announced that he was proceeding with his controversial plans to come down heavily on undocumented immigrants, a move he insists is necessary for national security.
“A nation without borders is not a nation. Starting today, the U.S. gets back control of its borders,” Trump said, adding, “This [wall] will help dismantle cartels, keeping illegal weapons and cash from flowing out of America and in to Mexico.”
Trump who had built his campaign around a promise that he would build a massive wall along the Mexican border and deport or jail up to 3 million illegal migrants — many of them from Africa — also maintained that Mexico would pay the full cost for construction of the wall, although he did not give specifics.
“We’ll be reimbursed at a later date from whatever transaction we make from Mexico.”
“I’m just telling you there will be a payment. It will be in a form, perhaps a complicated form. What I’m doing is good for the United States. It’s also going to be good for Mexico. We want to have a very stable, very solid Mexico,” Trump said.
Trump is expected to issue more divisive executive orders in the coming days, including one to restrict the inflow of refugees and stop the issuance of visas to people from terror hotspots in several Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Yemen) and Africa (Somalia, Libya, and Sudan).
