Washington had approved a $5 million payout to Liberia to take in up to 1,200 third-country deportees from the US as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration, the New York Times has reported.

The first flight carrying 20 migrants, mainly from Latin American countries such as Venezuela and Cuba, landed in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, on Thursday.

The NYT said in an article on Friday that the US State Department green-lighted the payment in December after Liberia said a few months earlier it would consider accepting migrants from other nations.

According to internal documents reviewed by the paper, Washington found assurances by Monrovia that the deportees would not be subject to racial or religious discrimination in the West African nation.

The US State Department said in the documents that the money could be allocated to boost Liberia’s immigration system and support vulnerable migrants. However, it also acknowledged the risk of the funds being misused.

Public spending data shows that the US made a $5 million payment to Liberia in January for unspecified “migration management activities,” the NYT said.

When addressed for comment by the paper, a representative of the State Department said that as a general matter, the agency would not “comment on the authenticity or veracity of allegedly leaked documents.”

The report by the NYT goes against the statements by the Liberian government that its agreement with the US was “entirely humanitarian.”

“The transfer of persons to Liberia is not a transaction with a quid pro quo. Liberia has not demanded or received any compensation or promise of reward in exchange for its consent to participate in the program,” it said on Tuesday.

However, Monrovia noted it “will receive support to help manage the program and strengthen its migration system more broadly,” without disclosing the value or terms of the assistance.

Liberia “was founded as a refuge for freed slaves from the US and other parts of the world” and “has a long history of accepting people seeking refuge from political and other crises,” the statement read.

Since the start of US President Donald Trump’s second term, Washington has inked deals with at least 35 nations to accept third-country deportees, according to data from Human Rights First, an NGO. The agreement with Liberia became one of the largest among them.

Democrats in the Senate estimated in February that at least $40 million in taxpayer money had been spent on such deals, inducing payments of $1.1 million per person to Rwanda for seven deportees and $7.5 million to Equatorial Guinea for 29 migrants.

Immigration lawyers have accused the Trump administration of using third-country deportations as a legal loophole to force migrants back to their countries of origin, which refuse to accept them directly from the US.

They have described the practice as excessively punitive, saying that people are left with no other choice but to try to return home after being delivered to places where they have never been to, don’t know the language and face security risks.