Trump Is Set To Turbocharge Third-Country Deportations

The Trump administration is set to vastly expand deportations to countries other than immigrants’ home nations, supercharging a system of international detainee transfers that human rights advocates say exposes thousands of people to human rights abuses, including potential persecution or torture in unsafe countries.

Such deportations, known as “third-country” removals, are emerging as an important piece of President Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” agenda. And several recent developments could fuel their dramatic expansion — including billions in new funding from Congress, aggressive pressure from U.S. diplomats on dozens of countries to accept third-country agreements, and the blessing of the Supreme Court, which late last month allowed the Trump administration to dramatically limit what human rights protections it applies to third-country deportees.

So far, the administration has sent hundreds of people to various nations other than their own, including El Salvador, where they’ve been indefinitely detained in the notorious CECOT prison, and South Sudan. On Tuesday, it added to the list, sending five men from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen to the African nation of Eswatini, which borders South Africa. Domestic and international legal efforts have sprung up to challenge the practice, with some success.

Now, though, the Trump administration is seeking to capitalize on its new resources and legal authority with an aggressive policy for third-country deportations, in which a detainee can be sent to a country totally foreign to them with no notice at all, nor any opportunity to object over fears of torture or persecution, The Washington Post reported Sunday. Reuters confirmed the report.

The policy “puts thousands of lives at risk of persecution and torture,” Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, one of the groups involved in the litigation over third-country removals, told the Post.

Asked about the third-country arrangements, a State Department spokesperson told HuffPost in an email Monday that “foreign governments will make decisions regarding the immigration status of aliens removed from the United States in accordance with their respective domestic laws and international obligations.”

“The United States does not remove aliens to a country where they would face persecution or torture,” the spokesperson added.

Third-country deportations rely on a portion of immigration law concerning situations where it is “impracticable, inadvisable, or impossible” to send a deportee to the country of removal designated by an immigration judge. This is usually the person’s home country, or else where they last resided before coming to the United States.

Presidents of both parties have used third-country deportations in the past, often for nationals of countries who don’t frequently accept repatriation flights, such as Cuba and China.

But the Trump administration has for months eyed a much more aggressive use of such removals. A February memo urged immigration agents to review cases in which non-detained immigrants were previously granted a reprieve from deportation to a given country due to torture concerns, in order to evaluate “the viability of removal to a third country and accordingly whether the alien should be re-detained.”

“We are working with other countries to say, ‘We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries, and will you do that as a favor to us?’ And the farther away from America the better, so they can’t come back across the border,’” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at an April 30 Cabinet meeting.

At that point, the United States had already launched its most prominent set of third-country deportations: the removal of 252 Venezuelans to the infamous Salvadoran prison known as CECOT, or Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, where all remain indefinitely detained without charge or trial today.

Judges pounced on those removals and other third-country deportations, finding in several cases that deportees must be allowed to exercise certain rights while still in the United States, such as the legal ability to challenge their detention, or to proclaim a fear of torture or persecution if sent to a given country, which would then trigger further screening.

In particular, in March and April, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy limited third-country deportations unless detainees were first given written notice of their eventual destination and allowed an opportunity to file an application for protection under the Convention Against Torture.

But the Supreme Court dealt a severe blow to those legal safeguards late last month. In an unsigned “shadow docket” decision, the court suspended Murphy’s ruling that detainees be given ample time and opportunity to contest a pending third-country removal.

That left the Trump administration status quo of quick deportations with limited potential for a challenge. That policy “does not protect noncitizens’ due process, statutory, and regulatory rights to notice and an opportunity to seek protection from persecution or torture,” litigants in the legal battle over the Trump administration policy have argued.

The deportations could soon move even quicker, and people being removed from the U.S. may have less opportunity to avoid a third-country removal. According to the memo obtained by the Post and Reuters, detainees can be sent to a given country with no notice at all, so long as that country has offered credible assurances to the Untied States that deportees will not face persecution or torture.

Even without assurances of detainees’ safety, migrants could be deported to a third country as quickly as six hours after first being informed of a pending deportation in “exigent” circumstances, or 24 hours otherwise. The detainee will not be asked if they have a fear of torture in the country, according to the memo, but rather will have to preemptively express such a fear themselves.

The administration has worked for weeks to maximize the number of countries with which it has third-country agreements. It has approached at least 58 nations with requests to accept third-country deportees — mostly in Africa, including many that have been targeted by Trump’s travel ban — and at least seven have accepted, The New York Times reported last month.

The United States has used secret threats and other strong-arm tactics against smaller nations, including those rife with conflict and human rights abuses, The Intercept reported of the effort. The outlet has referred to the network of third-country removals as a “global gulag”; though many countries have said they only intend to be stopovers for U.S. deportees before they proceed to another country, several have detained migrants themselves.

And Congress just approved handing Trump a treasure chest to fund these efforts. By passing the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Republicans have given Trump tens of billions of dollars to arrest, detain and transport immigrants. Of that, $14.4 billion is marked for new ICE transportation funds — a 20-fold increase over the agency’s 2024 transportation and removal budget, which was $721 million.

“You’re going to see immigration enforcement on a level you’ve never seen it before,” Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, told The New York Times over the weekend, referring to the cash infusion.

As relatively small nations with poor human rights records, something to gain from the Trump administration, and a willingness to deal with the United States in the unsavory business of shuffling people around the world, El Salvador and South Sudan offer prime early examples of what some call the administration’s “externalization” policy.

If those nations are any pattern for the Trump administration’s future efforts, detainees could face “a race to the bottom” in which “countries that are least concerned about their human rights records comply with the United States, or are bullied into complying with the United States,” said Isabella Mosselmans, director of the Global Strategic Litigation Council, or GSLC, which has filed legal challenges over several countries’ treatment of U.S. deportees.

In exchange for millions of dollars, El Salvador’s self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator,” Nayib Bukele, has housed at least 288 mostly Venezulan migrants to the United States in CECOT. Detainees in the prison are not allowed outside contact, and face alleged torture and physical abuse inside the facility.

Trump has threatened to jail “homegrowns” in the facility, as well, and has urged Bukele to build more prisons.

Given the refusal of either government to acknowledge the names or locations of transferred detainees, and the ongoing deprivation of their legal rights, many legal scholars and advocates have referred to the detainees as the victims of “enforced disappearances.”

“We think of enforced disappearance as happening under dictatorships, and in countries far from here, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing here, where you have 280 people who just disappeared in the middle of the night, with no communication or even public acknowledgement,” said Blaine Bookey, legal director at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, one of several groups that’s pursued an international legal case against El Salvador, alongside GSLC.

Since March, U.S. officials have argued that by nature of the detainees being in El Salvador, they are no longer in United States custody, which introduces a catch-22. If the U.S. government manages to get you to an overseas jail, they will argue you have no rights to challenge your detention in U.S. court, even if you weren’t given any opportunity to challenge it while on U.S. soil.

The recent transfer of eight U.S. detainees to South Sudan shows yet another extreme of that logic.

After weeks of detention in a shipping container in Djibouti, the men — from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam and South Sudan — were finally transferred to South Sudan last week after the Supreme Court cleared the way for their removal to the country. This despite a well-catalogued record of the administration violating court orders in the case, and despite South Sudan being so dangerous the U.S. government advises Americans to avoid all travel to the country.

And just as with El Salvador, the Trump administration is now disclaiming any responsibility for the men it sent to South Sudan. Asked whether they were in U.S. or South Sudanese custody recently, Homan told Politico, “They’re free.”

“They’re living in Sudan,” he added. “They can stay there a week and leave. I don’t know.”

As of Thursday, the men were being screened by South Sudanese officials, Reuters reported. It’s unclear what will happen to them next. The administration has played up the deportees’ criminal records and claimed that the immigrants’ home countries have refused to take them back. But in at least one case — the Mexican man sent to South Sudan — Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said she wasn’t made aware of the deportation. What’s more, the underlying legal authority used to transfer the men to the conflict-ridden nation could apply to anyone.

Case in point: Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Years ago, a judge issued an order preventing Abrego Garcia from being deported to El Salvador, his country of origin, because he faced gang violence there. The Trump administration improperly sent the Maryland man to CECOT anyway, earlier this year, and after months of ignoring court orders to facilitate his return to the United States, the U.S. government accused him of unlawfully transporting unauthorized migrants within the United States and, on those grounds, brought him back into the country to face the charges.

But under Trump administration policy, Abrego Garcia could face deportation to essentially any other nation besides El Salvador. If he is released from pre-trial custody, an ICE lawyer said in court last week, the administration will seek his swift deportation, rather than allowing Abrego Garcia’s criminal case to play out. He could be deported to Mexico or South Sudan, the lawyer said.

The families of CECOT detainees have for months offered the world a model for fighting back against Trump’s third-country deportations, spending the night in front of the United Nations building in Caracas, telling their stories worldwide, and working with litigators to take their fight to court. And there are some signs of progress.

Facing pressure from the United Nations, for example, El Salvador’s government wrote to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights’ Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, which had inquired about the alleged disappearances of four men thought to be CECOT detainees.

Rather than being in Salvadoran custody, the Salvadoran government wrote, “the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities, by virtue of international agreements signed and in accordance with the principles of sovereignty and international cooperation in criminal matters.”

That Salvadoran claim, that CECOT detainees were still the United States’ legal responsibility — a concept known as “constructive custody” — could have significant legal implications. Plaintiffs in a case concerning some CECOT detainees’ habeas corpus rights flagged the filing to District Court Judge James Boasberg as soon as they were made aware of it last week.

The judge had previously taken the Trump administration at its word that CECOT detainees were in Salvadoran custody, attorneys noted, but the government had not made El Salvador’s statement available to the court, and the statement “contradicts” the government’s claims, the attorneys wrote.

“[S]hould it become necessary for Petitioners to pursue the ‘constructive custody’ issue, Petitioners reserve the right to seek additional discovery in light of this new information,” they said.

And in another case — concerning a CECOT detainee referred to as “Cristian,” who the U.S. government improperly sent to the Salvadoran prison in violation of a 2024 settlement — U.S. District Court Judge Stephanie Gallagher wrote to the administration demanding an explanation of “diplomatic discussions” between the State Department and the government of El Salvador. The administration had previously said such discussions were necessary to facilitate Cristian’s return, but El Salvador’s statement to the United Nations seemed to indicate otherwise.

“Assuming the Government of El Salvador provided truthful information to the UN, no ‘diplomatic discussions’ should be required here because El Salvador has no sovereign interest in Cristian’s continued confinement in that country,” Gallagher wrote.

U.S. courts aren’t the only battlegrounds over the CECOT detentions. In May, several human rights groups representing CECOT detainees and their families — including GSLC and the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies — filed a legal action against El Salvador the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or IACHR, arguing El Salvador had violated regional and international human rights standards. The commission’s seven members can issue emergency “precautionary measures,” or requests that states take immediate action to protect human rights. El Salvador is expected to submit a written response to the commission any day now, though the document will not be filed publicly.

There are limitations to such international challenges. IACHR, for example, can’t enforce its decisions with military might or threaten government leaders with prison time. But the challenges can generate public scrutiny and build political pressure — a key consideration in governments deciding whether to cooperate with the Trump administration.

“Even when dealing with a recalcitrant state, that doesn’t mean that advocates should sit by while the states are violating the rights of individuals in their jurisdiction,” Bookey said.

“You want to do everything in your power to draw attention to that, to not take the spotlight off of it, so that eventually, when the state is pressured to respond, you’ve done everything you can to document what’s happened and to try to vindicate your rights in the forums that you have available to you.”

Costa Rica and Panama’s treatment of transferred U.S. migrants shows just how much change can come with international legal pressure. In recent months, both countries accepted hundreds of U.S. deportees — and both have changed course in their treatment of the migrants in response to legal scrutiny.

In February, the United States sent hundreds of migrants to Panama, including people from Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The migrants were detained, first in a Panama City hotel, and then, for those who did not return to their home countries, in a remote jungle camp. An Iranian convert to Christianity, Artemis Ghasemzadeh, snuck a phone into the detention center and relayed information to international human rights lawyers, Mosselmans recounted.

GSLC and other lawyers filed a complaint against Panama with the IACHR. The day before the government was required to respond to the commission, the country released everyone from detention, gave them temporary humanitarian permits, and dropped them off in Panama City. Recently, Ghasemzadeh received a visa that allowed her the right to work in the country, Mosselmans said.

In Costa Rica, some 200 migrants sent by the U.S., including 80 children, were kept detained in a former pencil factory in the jungle. GSLC and a local advocate filed litigation in a Costa Rican constitutional court, as well as with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.

The New York Times picked up the complaint before the U.N. — and the Costa Rican government “effectively went from saying, we’re holding these people under armed guard, to, the next day, giving the migrants back their passports, and allowing them freedom of movement,” Mosselmans said. “We believe that was the result of them receiving international press coverage on the issue.”

Late last month, the Costa Rican constitutional court ordered the release of the people from detention, and the government has granted the migrants work permits. After further legal challenges centered around the children’s rights to education, they recently attended school for the first time in Costa Rica.

“The aims of those legal challenges, the strategy, is to prevent those countries from receiving more unlawful expulsions from the United States, and also to protect the rights of the people who were expelled — to secure their release from detention, and secure them access to rights and protection in the countries they’ve ended up in,” Mosselmans said.

The potential expansion of the United States’ third-country deportation strategy, she stressed, is yet another reason to keep pushing against it.

“Now is not the time to retreat,” Mosselmans said. “Now is the most important time to fight for the rights of displaced communities everywhere.”