The Nigerians in Diaspora Commission (NIDCOM) has announced that the Federal Government was prepared to welcome deported Nigerians following a recent crackdown on immigrants in the United States.
The Director of Media and Corporate Affairs of the commission, Abdur-Rahman Balogun, in an interview on Tuesday, 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.
“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.
LEADERSHIP reports that about 3,690 Nigerians in the United States risk deportation as the newly inaugurated President Donald Trump cracked down on illegal immigrants in the country.
In the document compiled by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 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.
