Eastern Libya trucks 602 Chadian migrants to the border and vows raids on homes migrants rent

Eastern Libya trucks 602 Chadian migrants to the border and vows raids on homes migrants rent.

Authorities in eastern Libya deported 602 migrants from Chad this week and said a campaign of raids on homes rented by migrants in residential neighborhoods would continue, Reuters reported Thursday.

Abdulmenam al-Ghomati, spokesperson for the interior ministry's Anti-Illegal Migration Agency in Benghazi, said the people removed on Wednesday had been detained in recent security operations or stopped while trying to enter Libya irregularly. The transfer took a day and a half, with migrants driven by truck to the Chadian border. Photos released by the agency showed pickups crowded with dozens of people crossing remote desert, according to Reuters.

The agency's Kufra branch carried out the operation. In its own statement, quoted by the Libyan outlet Alwasat, it said the group included migrants "with medical conditions" and others under security restrictions, and framed the deportations as protecting "national security" and the country's borders. Infobae reported the agency described the removals as a demonstration of "the authority of the state."

Al-Ghomati said the campaign follows orders from Lieutenant General Saddam Haftar, deputy commander of the Libyan National Army led by his father, Khalifa Haftar, which controls the east and much of the south. Libya has been split between rival governments since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and is a main transit route for people heading to Europe across the Sahara and the Mediterranean.

Kufra borders Chad, Sudan and Egypt and has become a crossing point for people fleeing the war in Sudan and poverty across the Sahel. The UN estimated in mid-2026 that Libya's 100 municipalities host more than 900,000 migrants. Human rights groups have long documented abuse in Libyan detention and collective expulsions without individual review; the agency did not say whether any of those deported were able to seek asylum or contest their removal.

Focus Plus Media will follow whether UN agencies or Chad's government respond, and what the raids mean for migrant workers living in eastern Libyan cities.