Human rights organisations have expressed alarm at possible US plans to send a group of migrants from Vietnam, Laos and the Philippines to Libya on a military flight. They have pointed to the appalling conditions migrants face there, which the US State Department described as “harsh and life-threatening” in its 2023 Libya review.

The review quoted the UN support mission in Libya and civil society groups as saying they had “numerous reports of women subjected to forced prostitution in prisons or detention facilities”. A UN fact-finding mission to Libya, also in 2023, made similarly shocking allegations about conditions in Libya’s network of official migrant detention centres.

Such centres are run by the Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration, an official entity of the Libyan interior ministry. But, in reality, it is Libya’s complex patchwork of militias that is in control.

Based on interviews with more than 100 migrants, the report concluded that it had “reasonable grounds to believe that migrants were enslaved in detention centres … in Abu Salim, Zawiyah and Mabani, as well as in places of detention in al-Shwarif, Bani Walid, Sabratah, Zuwarah and Sabha”.

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There is no evidence that the proposed US scheme is in any way connected to the Libyan organisations involved in slavery. Trump has also denied any knowledge of the Libya deportations, referring journalists questioning him about it to the US Department of Homeland Security.

But the situation is dire for the tens of thousands of refugees and migrants who wind up in Libya each year in an attempt to cross into Europe. The threat of enslavement poses a real threat to anyone sent there.

Concern about slavery in Libya was perhaps most visibly highlighted in a CNN report from 2017. After receiving grainy footage of a slave sale, CNN sent journalists to Libya to gather evidence. They reported uncovering nine migrant slave auction sites.

In their report, which gained widespread international attention, the journalists wrote:

Carrying concealed cameras into a property outside the capital of Tripoli last month, we witness[ed] a dozen people go ‘under the hammer’ in the space of six or seven minutes.

‘Does anybody need a digger? This is a digger, a big strong man, he’ll dig,’ the salesman, dressed in camouflage gear, says. ‘What am I bid, what am I bid?’ Buyers raise their hands as the price rises, ‘500, 550, 600, 650 …’ Within minutes it is all over and the men, utterly resigned to their fate, are being handed over to their new ‘masters’.

After the auction, we met two of the men who had been sold. They were so traumatised by what they’d been through that they could not speak, and so scared that they were suspicious of everyone they met.

Unlike the Libyan media, which questioned the credibility of the CNN report, Libya’s authorities denounced the migrant slave auctions and said they would launch a formal investigation. But there is no indication that the proposed investigation has changed the operation of the detention centres.

CNN’s findings were replicated by other investigations. Shamsuddin Jibril, a Cameroonian migrant who saw men traded publicly in the streets of the Libyan town of Sabha, told the Guardian in 2017: “[The slave traders] took people and put them in the street under a sign that said ‘for sale’. They tied their hands just like in the former slave trade, and drove them … in the back of a Toyota Hilux”.

These practices are still happening. David Yambio, who himself experienced enslavement in Libya, is now the president of the Refugees in Libya movement. I spoke to Yambio while writing my book, Unbroken Chains: A 5,000 year history of African enslavement. He told me:

From my own experience, and through my daily work with Refugees in Libya, I can confirm that slavery is taking place inside Directorate for Combating Illegal Migration detention facilities.

I was held in places in such conditions between 2019 and 2022. To this day, people are still being enslaved inside these centres: Tariq al-Sikka, Ain Zara, Abu Salim, Al-Nasr in Zawiya, Al-Mabani, Bir Al-Ghanam, Al-Assah, Al-Maya, Ganfouda and Ajdabiya. The list goes on.

Just hours ago, I was in contact with around 130 women still enduring the same conditions inside Al-Nasr detention centre (known as Osama Prison) in Zawiya. It is concerning and it is an indisputable fact.

The Libyan route

Libya is one of the leading destinations for migrants attempting to reach Europe through Africa. In April 2025 alone, the European border force, Frontex, recorded 15,718 migrants from across the world making what they term “illegal border crossings” by traversing the central Mediterranean from Libya.

One of the largest groups seeking to reach Europe via Libya are Eritreans. Work led by Mirjam van Reisen of Leiden University has provided firsthand accounts of Eritreans describing the situation in the Tajoura detention centre, where Libyans come to select people to work.

The labourers are often referred to as slaves. One interviewee said: “Every morning when someone comes there, he says: ‘We need five eubayd, which means five slaves. I need five slaves.’ Everybody that is hearing that one, they are feeling angry.” Their forced labour ranges from farm and construction work to road work and garbage collecting.

Some refugees manage to raise funds from friends and family members to escape captivity. They are held in detention centres until they are deported or traffickers receive fees for taking them across the Mediterranean. Research by the UN suggests this ranges between US$850 (£644) and US$4,500 (£3,400) per crossing.

US officials say the military could start flying migrants to Libya imminently. However, authorities in Tripoli have rejected the use of Libyan territory as a destination for deporting migrants without its knowledge or consent.

There are also judicial hurdles. On May 7, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that the deportation of immigrants to Libya would be in violation of a court order he issued in March.

However, the Trump administration’s record suggests it does not always follow such rulings. This leaves the migrants in considerable jeopardy.