红杏视频

The Trump administration has deported over the last year and a half to countries they have no relationship with, where they may not speak the language, and where they generally have no legal status. Sometimes, it deports people to conflict zones or countries where they are likely to face persecution or even torture.

The Trump administration is spending tens of millions of dollars to fly people, shackled at times for , to 鈥渢hird countries鈥� where they have no ties 鈥� even when they have won protection in U.S. immigration courts. The policies and agreements behind third country deportations are being negotiated behind closed doors, and some have never been made public.

On the one hand, what the U.S. government is really paying for is propaganda: The goal is to terrify immigrants into abandoning their cases and 鈥渟elf-deporting.鈥� But at the same time, this administration is keeping its agreements, flight plans, and any information on who it has deported where and why as closely-held secrets. The secrecy is a strategy, and as we have seen with other regimes that participate in enforced disappearances, it is designed to hide these flights from court and public intervention, torment those on the flights, and terrify others waiting to find out if they will be next.

The U.S. government is deporting people who cannot be returned to their countries of origin to third countries. In many cases, these are individuals who suffered torture or persecution in their countries of origin, and now the U.S. government is trying to find other places where they can be deported instead. This summer, the Trump administration accelerated its deportations of immigrants from Latin America, Central Asia, and the Middle East to a growing list of countries including Rwanda, Equatorial Guinea, and the Central African Republic that are being paid by the United States through obscure deals. Since June, for example, the U.S. has sent three deportation flights to the Central African Republic (CAR), deporting Afghans, Russians, Jordanians, Iranians and many others. And yet, the U.S. State Department CAR is too dangerous to visit, but if you do, make a will and leave a DNA sample to identify your body.

The U.S. government is spending at times $50 million per flight to deport people to third countries to them into giving up hope, abandoning their families, and self-deporting. Otherwise, they face what is effectively an to a country, even a continent, they鈥檝e never seen. People deported to third countries have been held under house arrest or even in , with no pending criminal charges. There are now several reports of people deported to being assaulted and threatened by armed guards. They have no permanent legal status and often have no identification documents, money, or support once deported.

What makes this Machiavellian plan especially cruel is who it targets: people who won protection in U.S. courts after proving they were likely to be persecuted or tortured if deported back to the countries they fled. , for example, is a young Afghan whose father and siblings helped the U.S. military in Afghanistan. After his family was attacked by the Taliban, he tried to seek safety in the United States, where a judge found he would likely be persecuted if returned to Afghanistan. Rather than release him to his family in the United States, the government then deported him to CAR, a conflict zone where Russian mercenaries provide the 鈥渟ecurity鈥� and Muslims are often of violence.

Khalil鈥檚 case isn鈥檛 the exception; it鈥檚 the Trump administration鈥檚 model. Over the last several months, the United States has deported an to CAR, a woman from Togo fleeing to Ghana, and a tortured by Boko Haram to Ghana. In both of the latter cases, Ghana then deported the individuals back to the countries they had protection from. We hear routinely about people who won protection on account of their and are now deported to countries like and where that status is criminalized. These are people who have already endured horrors and cannot safely return home. Our government is using their suffering as an example of what immigrants will face if they don鈥檛 self-deport while claiming that these countries have given diplomatic assurances that immigrants will be safe there 鈥� assurances that the government knows are, in fact, baseless.

In January 2025, the United States had no third country deportation agreements. Today, the U.S. government has signed more than 35, with the exact number still unknown. There are now numerous cases of people deported to third countries under this scheme who have also then been deported onwards to the very countries they fled in what is known as chain refoulement, which is in violation of human rights law.

But while the government is deliberating broadcasting its general plans in order to coerce people into self-deporting, the Trump administration is also hiding specific details about its agreements, including who is being targeted for third country removal, to avoid scrutiny and public outcry.

In many cases, agreements between the United States and the receiving country are only publicly announced days before a deportation flight takes off. The agreement with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, was in February 2026 but only made public in , shortly before the third country flight. Agreements with some repeat players like Mexico have never been made public; part of Ghana鈥檚 was just published this September, over a year after it was signed. This lack of transparency undercuts public and congressional oversight, fueling a system where people are deported in secret to horrific conditions with no accountability.

The flights are also a closely guarded secret, making it virtually impossible for detained individuals to find attorneys and contest their deportation to a place where they may face persecution or torture. The government鈥檚 secrecy appears to be a calculated attempt to rush people out of the country before court intervention and before the media or Congress can corroborate who is on the flights.

Last year, under the wartime Alien Enemies Act, the U.S. government illegally deported more than 100 people to El Salvador where they were detained and tortured at the infamous Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT. During an emergency court hearing on March 15, 2025, where the 红杏视频 sought a temporary restraining order, government counsel repeatedly told a federal court that counsel was not aware of any immediate plans to deport these men. In fact, two of the planes took off during the hearing. At the end of the hearing, the court the government to return the planes and not disembark them in El Salvador, whether they had taken off or not. While aware of the court order, the Trump administration ordered the flights to continue on to El Salvador and later claimed it could not bring the deported individuals back. The litigation continues, with hearings proceeding in September in federal court, to ensure due process for these individuals and to hold the government accountable for defying court orders.

Hiding these flights was a deliberate strategy. To this day, the U.S. government continues to hide its third country deportation plans, particularly to places where people face danger. We routinely hear from attorneys that the government will not confirm where or when it might deport their clients, has even denied imminent plans to deport specific individuals who are already on the planes, and has allegedly lied to immigrants and their attorneys about the flight destination.

This secrecy is working for the government: It means that people cannot get lawyers in time, and reporters cannot obtain any official information about these deportation flights until the planes land. It means people cannot prepare for or challenge their deportation 鈥� and the public doesn鈥檛 know what has happened until it is too late. We may never know the full scope of what the United States is offering countries in exchange for taking our neighbors, and we may never get a full accounting of who has been disappeared. But what we are learning every week is that the dangers people face when deported, at taxpayer expense, are predictable, escalating, and intentionally cruel.