By Newsmata
The Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM) says the Federal Government is prepared to welcome Nigerians that would be repatriated by the United States government following a recent crackdown on illegal immigrants by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The Director of Media and Corporate Affairs of the commission, Abdur-Rahman Balogun, in an interview on Tuesday with Leadership newspaper, said that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was in charge of such development.
Balogun, who disclosed that the government had already set up an inter-agency committee to handle the matter should Nigerians be deported from the US, however, noted that the commission was not aware of Nigerians in America being processed for deportation.
According to Balogun, “The Federal Government has set up an inter-agency committee, comprising the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, NiDCOM, Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and office of the National Security Adviser, NSA, should there be mass deportation of Nigerians from the US,” he states.
Newsmata reports that 3,690 Nigerians in the United States have been arrested and handcuffed by the ICE preparatory to their repatriation as the Donald Trump administration launched its mass deportation operation.
In the document compiled by US ICE, Enforcement and Removal Operations, the agency revealed the data is broken down by nationality and number of people faced with deportation.
In the document titled “Noncitizens on the ICE Non-Detained Docket with Final Orders of Removal by Country of Citizenship,” Mexico and El Salvador top the list of nations facing the most deportations, with 252,044 and 203,822, respectively.