Since returning to power in January 2025, the Trump administration has deported more than 25,000 people to countries other than their own — part of a sweeping and largely secretive immigration enforcement strategy that a US federal appeals court has now ruled unlawful. The policy, known as third-country removal, has sent thousands of migrants and asylum seekers to nations they have never visited, often without adequate legal notice and in conditions human rights groups describe as cruel and degrading.
Around 20,000 of those deported were bussed to Mexico, despite the absence of a formal bilateral agreement. At least 5,447 others were flown to 28 countries across Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Central Asia. The Trump administration has concluded deportation deals with at least 35 countries on six continents, with 13 of those in Africa — including Ghana, the Central African Republic, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Eswatini. The pace of these removals has accelerated: in August 2026 alone, a record 16 flights carried people to 13 different third countries in a single month. Critics note that several partner countries, including Equatorial Guinea — a small oil-rich state on Central Africa's Atlantic coast with a long-documented record of authoritarian governance — were not previously considered US partners.
The human cost is illustrated by individual cases gathered by a 26-outlet international consortium, the Deportation Project, coordinated by Paris-based investigative organisation Forbidden Stories. Nika, a 32-year-old Iranian woman who had fled her country after participating in protests against its government and had been granted legal protection barring her removal to Iran, was nonetheless rearrested by immigration officers twelve days after a judge ordered her release. She was flown to Bangui, capital of the Central African Republic — a country the US State Department itself advises American citizens not to visit due to kidnapping and armed conflict risks. Rabbiatu Kuyateh, a 58-year-old Sierra Leonean nurse who had lived and worked in the United States for nearly 30 years, was detained during a routine check-in appointment in Baltimore and deported to Ghana, more than 1,000 kilometres from her country of origin, before Ghanaian immigration agents forcibly transferred her onward to Sierra Leone. A separate agreement between the Trump and Bukele administrations in El Salvador — the details of which remained secret until they surfaced in court proceedings in September 2025 — saw Salvadoran and Venezuelan deportees held in the CECOT high-security prison without access to lawyers or legal proceedings. Families of at least eleven Salvadorans say they have received no information about their relatives' whereabouts.
The administration has repeatedly described those it deports as dangerous criminals. However, documents obtained by consortium members show that a majority of the 35 signatory countries said they would not accept migrants with violent criminal records, and lawyers representing dozens of deportees say most of their clients have no criminal history at all. Of those detained by ICE in July, only four percent were found to have committed violent offences. Many held legal protections — known as "withholding of removal" — meaning US immigration judges had already determined they faced a credible risk of persecution or death if returned to their home countries.
On Friday, a three-judge panel of the First US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston upheld a lower court ruling that the policy violates migrants' due process rights, finding that individuals must be given a meaningful opportunity to raise safety concerns before being sent to an unfamiliar country. The Trump administration is expected to appeal, potentially bringing the case before the Supreme Court, which has previously allowed some third-country removals to proceed. Human rights lawyers say the ruling should halt further flights, though the government has signalled it will press ahead. A State Department spokesperson reaffirmed the administration's commitment to using "all legal means" to enforce its immigration agenda.