Appeals court rules third-country deportation policy unlawful

DHS general counsel says deportation policy continues

The ruling stems from a March 2025 lawsuit arguing that the US was sending people to places where they could be hurt or killed. A US district judge issued a preliminary injunction in April 2025 that paused deportation flights, but the Supreme Court ruled two months later that the policy could resume while the legal case played out. The administration then ramped up the flights. Human rights lawyers have said Friday’s appellate ruling should ground third-country deportation flights immediately.

Since returning to office in 2025, the Trump administration has deported more than 25,000 migrants, refugees and asylum seekers to countries that are not their own under 35 separate deals, according to a joint investigation by The Guardian and 23 other media organizations coordinated by Paris-based Forbidden Stories. The consortium, known as the Deportation Project, reviewed internal state department records and interviewed more than 100 people affected by or involved in the deportations. Human rights lawyers describe these so-called third-country national arrangements as a “show of force”, intended to make people fear the consequences of entering the US without permission. While the Trump administration trialled the policy during its first term, most of the 35 deals with foreign countries have been struck since 2025.

The third-country arrangements operate, human rights lawyers say, as a workaround for a long-standing US legal prohibition against returning people to countries where they face persecution. Rather than sending migrants directly to their home countries, the administration deports them to third countries that have agreed to accept them, and that, in many cases, then deport them onward to the very places they originally fled.

The administration has struck 35 such deals since 2025 and pledged at least $410 million (£307 million) to secure the agreements, according to internal state department records reviewed by The Washington Post as part of the same investigation. Almost a third of the receiving countries are in Africa. About 20,000 of those deported have been bussed to Mexico, while at least 5,000 more have been placed on planes to countries in Latin America, Africa, Central Asia and the Caribbean.

The State Department claims that its priority is deporting people with criminal histories. But people interviewed by The Guardian said they had no criminal records, and immigration judges had ruled that those interviewed should be allowed to stay in the US because of credible fears they may face harm if sent home. State Department documents indicate that a majority of the 35 receiving countries have specified they will not accept migrants with violent criminal records.

Those affected include a nurse originally from Sierra Leone who had been her parents’ main caregiver in the US, an anti-government protester who had fled Iran, and a gay man who fled Ghana after he was outed and then hunted by members of his family, The Guardian reported.

The drive is being led by Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, and is run out of the newly created Office of Remigration, a section within the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. The Guardian reported that the office’s name incorporates a term that has been adopted by the far right to describe the forcible expulsion of minority ethnic immigrants.

The financial terms of individual deals remain largely opaque. Internal records indicate $30 million was earmarked for Cameroon in return for accepting 1,000 migrants; the US has so far sent 44. The Democratic Republic of the Congo was promised $50 million toward UN operations there in return for accepting 2,000 migrants; it has received 15, and flights to Kinshasa are on hold because of the country’s Ebola outbreak.

The State Department is also using its foreign aid budget to support the agreements, allocating funds to UN agencies that assist migrants in some of the third countries. A spokesperson for UNHCR, the UN refugee agency that receives some of the funds, said the agency supports “states in fulfilling their primary responsibility to protect refugees and asylum seekers on their territory by helping ensure that, irrespective of the circumstances of their arrival, they have access to asylum procedures and are not returned to places where they face a risk of harm.”