This post is part of a symposium on international law under the second Trump administration. Read the rest of the posts here.
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During his most recent campaign, President Trump promised to launch “the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America.” In his first year back in office, that general ambition became a more specific aspiration: to remove 1 million migrants within one year.
To achieve this goal, the administration has significantly increased ICE funding and staffing, dramatically (and illegally) expanded the use of mandatory detention, pushed to dismantle Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of people, and denied green cards to those who espouse pro-Palestine politics. The Administration has also leaned heavily on third country removals, expelling many of the most vulnerable to countries where they face incarceration, torture, and chain refoulement (i.e., being passed along to their respective country of origin, to which the United States was legally barred from sending them).
While previous administrations have used third party removals primarily as a workaround for exceptional cases, the Trump administration has embraced this tool as a deliberate strategy to increase both deportation and terror. As of May 2026, the United States has agreements—some formal, some apparently “unwritten”—with at least 27 countries to accept deportees who are neither nationals nor citizens of those countries. Thousands of noncitizens have been impacted by these policies, which almost certainly violate domestic and international legal obligations that forbid the United States from removing anyone to a country where their life or freedom would be threatened, or where they would face torture. This prohibition also includes being removed to a third country when the US Government knows that the individual would subsequently be removed to a country where she would likely face persecution or torture. Separately, the law also lays out a process for determining where someone should be deported once a removal order has been issued, including when and how an alternate country might be identified.
Notwithstanding these obligations, and multiple court orders requiring adherence to them, the United States continues its third country removal regime seemingly unrestrained. As I explain in this brief post, this new scheme is marked by imperialism, speed, secrecy, and punishment.
Immigration Imperialism
Immigration imperialism is not new. The United States has a long history of exploitation, intervention, and abdication of responsibility across the globe, often leading directly to migration from the very nations it has pillaged. Indeed, the migrant groups most policed, surveilled, detained and deported within and from the United States tend to be from the very nations in the Global South most destroyed through the relentless pursuit of Northern capitalism. Now, the United States is incentivizing poorer countries to accept third-country deportees in exchange for easing visa and tariff restrictions, financing public health services, providing foreign aid and even reconsidering a country’s placement on U.S. watch lists.
The case of Cameroon is emblematic. The country, run by a 93-year-old dictator who recently engaged in a widely condemned post-election protest crackdown, was coerced into accepting deportees after the U.S. government withheld a $30 million disbursement to a local U.N. refugee office there. At least 17 deportees—none of whom are Cameroonian—have been removed there on flights in January and February of this year. They are being imprisoned until they agree to return to their home countries, countries where US courts have found they will face persecution or torture.
The work of Cait Storr, Darryl Li, and others helps contextualize this particular brand of imperialism. As Storr describes, many former colonies have never experienced true decolonization—instead, former colonial powers have continued to treat former colonies as countries from which to extract resources. Both environmental resources but also sovereignty. Put another way, post-colonial states can trade in their sovereignty for other benefits—low tariffs, more visas, and, of course, cold, hard cash.
In fact, as Li explains, it is often in the interest of the US government to maintain the sovereignty of partner states in weaker form, rather than destroying it entirely. Why? Because doing so allows the US government to distribute responsibility for expanded state and carceral violence. The case of third country removal exemplifies both these trends. Post colonial states barter sovereignty for material benefits, while simultaneously alleviating the US Government of sole responsibility for increased state terror.
Speed & Secrecy
In terms of process, the recent use of third country removals is defined by two elements: speed and secrecy. The speed of the removals, which can be especially pernicious, is purposeful—to avoid judicial scrutiny and, to a lesser extent, public scrutiny. Formal guidance from ICE suggests, but does not require, that the agency will “wait 24 hours following service of the Notice of Removal before effectuating removal.” The guidance goes on to state that, “[i]n exigent circumstances, [ICE] may execute a removal order six (6) or more hours after service of the Notice of Removal.” The reality is more ominous.
In one case, the US government attempted to remove 13 non-Libyans to Libya amidst violent civil unrest. The removals provided almost no notice to the Laotian, Vietnamese, and Philippine victims and was only narrowly avoided by a court order. In another case, the US government attempted to remove six individuals to South Sudan. On the evening of May 19, at 5:45pm, the government notified the individuals that they would be removed at 9:35am the following morning. They had less than 24 hours to make out a cognizable case for fear-based relief; that is, to make a complicated legal argument establishing that they would be persecuted or tortured in South Sudan, a country none of them had ever been to.
Third country removals are also shrouded in secrecy, on both individual and systemic levels. Systemically, both the backdoor diplomatic deals and cash payments to guarantee them are shielded from public scrutiny, though advocacy groups have made considerable efforts to expose them. Like other kinds of “shadow removals,” including expedited removal, reinstatement of removal, and administrative removal, third country removals typically occur outside the purview of a courtroom and without any meaningful oversight. Often, third country removals elude judicial review entirely.
On an individual level, those being removed to third countries are provided no notice of their removal and only discover, upon landing, where they are. A political refugee from Liberia landed in Ghana, a Jamaican refugee was deposited in Eswatini; neither were told where they were headed, let alone permitted to make out a claim for protection. Like many others, they were effectively kidnapped under cover of night and dropped at airports and open-air prisons in countries they had never been to, and in some cases never heard of.
Punishment
Since 1893, it’s been an axiom of US immigration law that an “order of deportation is not a punishment.” Of course, those who have experienced it would contend otherwise and, as Pedro Gerson has convincingly argued, in the case of third country removal, punishment is the point. Third country removal intentionally circumvents the standard regulatory procedure with the intent to terrorize noncitizens, who can either abandon their meritorious legal claims and “self-deport” or face the threat of removal to an unknown country where they may be detained and/or tortured; it is punishment in both purpose and effect.
The most notorious example during the last year is the case of more than 280 men, disappeared to CECOT prison in El Salvador, the majority of whom were Venezuelan. The deported men incarcerated at CECOT reported “a pattern of abuse, including beatings, humiliation, and sexual assault.” And Former DHS Secretary Noem, undeterred by judicial rebuke, promised more of the same. Indeed, CECOT is not an isolated example. Deportees to Sudan, Eswatini, Cameroon, Ghana, Costa Rica and Panama have experienced arbitrary detention, and in some cases torture. They have been denied medical care, adequate food and water, and have been held in extreme heat and unsanitary conditions.
Still many others have been chain refouled, or coerced into accepting chain refoulement, as a condition of release from foreign prisons. This removal to their respective countries of origin is often despite US court orders previously finding these individuals would be persecuted or tortured there. In one instance, a gay Guatemalan man who was granted protection from Guatemala was removed to Mexico instead. From there, he was promptly removed to Guatemala, where, terrified, he quickly went into hiding.
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How should we view the Trump administration’s deliberate turn toward expanded third country removal? On the one hand, this developing regime is of a piece both with US history and efforts by other countries to externalize refugee obligations and offshore migrant policing. During the Biden Administration, Vice President Harris applied vocal diplomatic pressure on Mexico to enhance their own border security, and, in many cases, to violently crack down on northward migration from Latin America. In 2022, the UK-Rwanda “asylum partnership” sought to externalize the UK’s refugee obligations, relocating all would-be asylum seekers to Rwanda, regardless of their countries of origin. For nearly a decade, Turkey has served as a sort of “buffer,” financially incentivized to “manage” the large refugee population hoping to travel onward to the European Union. Seen from this perspective, third country removal feels like an almost inevitable ratcheting up of the immigration cruelty Olympics; the natural next step in the United States’ ruthless deportation regime.
And yet, third country deportation is more sinister, more insidious—more akin to an illegal, “black site” extraordinary rendition than a judicial removal proceeding. There is no real process, no judicial review, and no notice to noncitizens of either where they may land, or what they will face when they get there. Finally, and as is consistent with the Trump Administration’s unrelenting disregard for laws it doesn’t like, it flies in the face of both our domestic and international legal obligations.
