Human Rights First and Refugees International Third Country Deportation Watch Details Scope, Secrecy, and Human Toll of Third Country Transfer Agreements

NEW YORK—Today, Human Rights First and Refugees International released an update of its Banished by Bargain: Third Country Deportation Watch tracker that exposes the growing scale, secrecy, and human toll of the Trump administration’s third country transfer agreements. 

New findings from the tracker update reveal that the Trump administration has:

• Entered into third country transfer agreements with more than 30 countries. 
• Forcibly transferred more than 17,400 people to third countries where many have no legal or personal ties, and many have been subjected to arbitrary detention, family separations, refoulement, and enforced disappearances. 
• Increasingly targeting individuals granted protection by U.S. officials due to likely persecution or torture in countries of origin.  
• Failed to disclose many of these agreements as required by law. 
• Paid at least $44 million to third country governments in direct connection with the agreements, including governments responsible for grave human rights violations.  

“These third-country deportation deals are undermining protection and humanitarianism globally and putting lives at risk. They also represent a gross misuse of U.S. taxpayer dollars by paying rights-abusing governments to take in and send people granted protection in the United States back toward the dangers they fled, in violation of U.S. and international law,” said Refugees International President Jeremy Konyndyk. “This is a deliberate effort to undermine protection, coerce people to abandon their claims, and erode the foundations of the Refugee Convention and Convention Against Torture. Congress must act to expose and stop this misuse of taxpayer dollars that advances a foreign policy driven by anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment—while fueling corruption, human rights abuses, and humanitarian catastrophe.”

“Driven by xenophobia, the Trump administration has advanced a cruel and lawless foreign policy that treats human lives as bargaining chips, exposing people to refoulement, arbitrary detention, family separation, and other grave harms. Through its proliferating third country agreements, the United States is undermining refugee protections and sidestepping treaty obligations,” said Uzra Zeya, President and CEO of Human Rights First. “The more than 30 countries pressured into these deals are not merely complicit—they are active partners in violating international law and eroding the norms that uphold it.”  

Further key findings of the tracker update include: 

• The Trump administration has signed agreements with more than 30 countries, making them not only complicit in its deportation and detention campaign but also collaborators in both violations of international refugee and human rights law and a relentless effort to undermine international law and treaties. 
• The Trump administration has pledged at least U.S. $44 million in funding to third countries in exchange for signing third country agreements. It has also threatened these countries with tariffs, other economic barriers, visa restrictions, and withholding U.S. funding for international organizations, as well as offering promises of aid as leverage.
• The Trump administration has sent more than 17,400 people to 21 third countries. Recent transfers in the past two months include to Cameroon, Costa Rica, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Moldova, Paraguay, Poland, and Uganda, as well as ongoing transfers to Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. The vast majority (nearly 16,000 individuals) have been sent to Mexico, while the other 1,400 people have been sent to the 20 other countries. Beyond the harm these individuals are subjected to in third countries, the agreements aim to instill fear across immigrant communities in the United States, pressuring individuals to abandon their legal claims, and to return to the very harm they fled. 
• In the past several months, the Trump administration has increasingly targeted and removed to third countries many people who were granted withholding of removal or protection under the Convention Against Torture by U.S. immigration judges based on a determination that they would likely face persecution or torture in their home country. These forced transfers have subjected people to indefinite detention in third countries and already resulted in chain refoulement to home countries—including of LGBTQ+ individuals. Many more who have been transferred to third countries are at serious risk of chain refoulement due to pressure by government officials, the coercive nature of indefinite confinement, or fear that their life might be at risk in the third country.
• The Trump administration has failed to make many agreements public, despite requirements under the Case Zablocki Act that the text of all international agreements be disclosed to Congress within 60 days of entering into force.  Agreements with Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Moldova, Poland, and Sierra Leone have yet to be disclosed. 
• Forced transfers under these agreements indefinitely separate people from their children, spouses, and other family members, in many cases after they have built a life in the United States for years or decades. The U.S. government often provides little to no notice before people are shackled and boarded on third country transfer flights, leaving families in anguish when their loved ones disappear, only to later discover they are in a foreign country—indefinitely imprisoned or left somewhere where they face a risk of violence, detention, and chain refoulement.  

As UN Member State and Observers, UN representatives, and civil society organizations gather in New York this week for the second International Migration Review Forum (IMRF) to assess progress on the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, Human Rights First and Refugees International call on governments across the globe to adhere to their commitment to non-refoulement, uphold human rights, and sustain the international protection system. 

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For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact Sarah Sheffer at ssheffer@refugeesinternational.org or Sydney Randall at press@humanrightsfirst.org.