The Secret Expansion of US Third-Country Deportations
Under the Trump administration, third-country deportations have become a major cornerstone of US immigration policy, with over 25,000 migrants secretly expelled to nations other than their countries of origin. According to an investigative report by Forbidden Stories, alongside major outlets like The Washington Post and The Guardian, the US State Department has established covert agreements with 35 different countries since January of last year. Out of these 25,000 individuals, approximately 20,000 were sent to Mexico, while the remaining 5,000 were transferred to nations across Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia.
To orchestrate these sweeping actions, the administration created a specialized ‘Resettlement Bureau’ under the Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) bureau. Internal documents reviewed by journalists reveal that the US government approved or promised at least $410 million in financial support to incentivise foreign nations into signing these pacts.
Shifting Legal Frameworks and International Backlash
Unlike the first Trump administration’s ‘Safe Third Country Agreements’βwhich required receiving nations to legally guarantee human rights and asylum accessβthe current administration introduced the ‘Third Country National Agreement’ (TCNA). Under TCNA protocols, partner nations are not legally mandated to protect human rights or formal asylum processes, making it vastly easier to deport individuals who face persecution or whose home governments refuse to take them back.
While federal appeals courts recently ruled these sweeping deportations unlawful for bypassing due process, the administration plans to appeal to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, international human rights organizations like Amnesty International have heavily criticized both US and European Union moves to outsource migration controls, warning that such hubs risk turning into human rights black holes.
