Banished by Bargain:
third Country deportation watch
Monitoring the human cost of
the U.S. government’s forced
third country transfer agreements
The Trump administration has created an opaque web of formal bilateral agreements and behind-the-scenes deals that send asylum seekers and other immigrants—with almost no warning and little chance to raise fears of persecution—to countries with which they have no ties and where many are subject to grave mistreatment including arbitrary detention, torture, or return to danger in the very countries they once fled.
Forced third country agreements also increasingly operate as a coercive tool against people in the United States who are in need of protection. Many agreements are deals reflecting the interests of states that use immigrants and refugees as currency—and deprive them of their rights.
This tracker explains the U.S. third country transfer agreements, the political and financial motives behind them, and the harms they have caused—as well as relevant lawsuits and other efforts to challenge them.
EXPLORE AGREEMENTS BY COUNTRY
Antigua and Barbuda | Belize | Burundi | Cabo Verde | Cameroon
Central African Republic | Costa Rica | Democratic Republic of the Congo
Dominica | Ecuador | El Salvador | Equatorial Guinea
Eswatini | Ghana | Guatemala | Guyana | Honduras | Kosovo
Liberia | Libya | Mexico | Moldova | Palau | Panama | Paraguay
Poland | Rwanda | Sierra Leone | South Sudan | St. Kitts and Nevis
St. Lucia | Uganda | Uzbekistan
Tracking the Human Cost
Forced third country transfers have separated parents from children, spouses from one another, and cut people off from their communities in the United States. In many cases, they have resulted in enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, and unlawful refoulement (where people are sent to persecution in the country they fled, either directly or via third country).
The toll on individuals and family members is profound: mental anguish, uncertainty, and no safe path to reunification.
What types of agreements and arrangements has the United States made with third countries?
Arrangements to incarcerate forcibly transferred people in prisons in El Salvador, Eswatini, and South Sudan until eventual onward transfer.
Arrangements for temporary transfer before onward return to home country with Cameroon, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Panama, Poland, and Uzbekistan. In the majority of instances this has also included arbitrary detention.
“Asylum Cooperative Agreements” (ACA) or attempts at “safe third country agreements” (STCA) with Belize, Cabo Verde, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Liberia, Paraguay, and Uganda, where people transferred purportedly may pursue an asylum claim.
Other types of arrangements that may include detention, onward transfer, and/or remaining in the third country, such as with Mexico and Rwanda, as well as additional arrangements with Guatemala, Honduras, and Paraguay outside the parameters of ACAs signed with those countries, and a new 2026 agreement with Costa Rica (following a separate 2025 agreement).
*Given the undisclosed text of certain agreements and/or lack of sufficient tracked transfers and treatment of third country nationals under them, the arrangements with the following countries cannot yet be categorized: Antigua and Barbuda, Burundi, Dominica, Guyana, Libya, Kosovo, Palau, Sierra Leone, St. Lucia and St. Kitts and Nevis.
Where have people been sent?
As of May 5, 2026, the Trump administration has used these deals to send over 17,500 third country nationals to at least 21 countries (Cameroon, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Mexico, Moldova, Palau, Panama, Paraguay, Poland, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda and Uzbekistan). It also attempted to send people to Libya in violation of a court order. Most third countries have received only a few dozen people or fewer, on flights without a regular cadence. The vast majority of removals of third country nationals have been to Mexico, where nearly 16,000 people have been sent (including thousands of people that the Trump administration has not acknowledged in its accounting to a federal court on March 5, 2026). A March 2026 agreement with Costa Rica provides for regular transfers of 25 people per week.
The administration has also entered into agreements with at least 10 other countries, including Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Central African Republic, Dominica, Guyana, Liberia, St. Lucia, and St. Kitts and Nevis, where transfers have not yet occurred as far as is publicly known. Discussions over an agreement with Grenada are ongoing, and an agreement may be finalized or in the process of being finalized with Sierra Leone. Negotiations over an agreement have stalled with Argentina. We will update this site with country pages for these agreements when further information is available.
A separate tool, ICE Flight Monitor, tracks Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) removal flights, including those to third countries, to bring transparency to government operations that are often hidden from public view. This tracker currently does not include removals to the country of origin that involve a layover in a third country—for example, Iranians returned to Tehran via Qatar and Kuwait, Venezuelans returned to Caracas via Honduras, or Russians returned to Moscow via Egypt. It also does not track ad hoc forced third country transfers carried out on commercial flights.
Why is the Trump administration doing this?
The administration’s policy punishes immigrants and asylum seekers and deprives them of their rights under U.S. law. The administration is disappearing people to unknown locations before family members and lawyers can help them, sending them to face arbitrary detention, torture, chain refoulement, and other harms. The mistreatment in the third country is inflicted not for any crime committed there or in the United States, but because they were immigrants in the United States subjected to a forced transfer arrangement.
The administration is wielding the threat of forced transfers to terrify immigrant communities and force people to leave the United States, including by publicly warning: “If you do not leave, we will hunt you down, arrest you, and you could end up in this El Salvadorian prison.” U.S. immigration officials also directly threaten detained immigrants with transfer to a third country in order to coerce them to relinquish their rights and abandon their immigration cases. In some cases, the U.S. government seems motivated to not only punish immigrants and terrify others, but perhaps also to pressure other governments into accepting the return of their own nationals.
The administration is also using Asylum Cooperative Agreements to “pretermit” thousands of pending asylum cases in immigration court, refusing to consider the applicants’ asylum claims and instead issuing removal orders to third countries. This tactic is being used to automatically deny people’s asylum cases irrespective of their claim and send some to third countries, while the majority of asylum seekers with pretermitted cases—thousands of people—are left in limbo with a removal order and facing loss of their work permit, many subject to prolonged detention or at risk of being detained, without ever having had an opportunity to present their case. Pretermissions are discussed in more detail below.
Who is being sent to third countries through these deals?
The Trump administration has used these deals to banish to third countries men, women, children, and families, including pregnant people, individuals with medical or psychological vulnerabilities, and those with recognized legal protection claims. People who have been forcibly transferred from the United States under these arrangements have come from a wide range of countries across the globe. This tracker’s country sections specify the nationalities and number of people sent to each third country.
The administration has forcibly transferred asylum seekers and other migrants at various stages of their immigration case, including:
people arriving in the United States to seek asylum who are expelled without consideration of their claim
people in the midst of their immigration court case who have not received a full hearing on their asylum claim or a decision from a judge
people approved for refugee resettlement by U.S. refugee officers
people to whom U.S. immigration judges have granted protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) or withholding of removal because of likely torture or persecution in their home countries
people with final orders of removal for whom removal to the third country was never raised by the government
Why would other countries agree?
Through forced third country transfer agreements, the Trump administration has warped U.S. international relations in service of its deportation agenda. In many cases, the reasons countries have agreed to receive third country nationals remain murky, often bound up in pressure and incentives from the Trump administration, as well as broader bilateral geopolitical and financial interests. At the time that many of these agreements were signed and implemented, the Trump administration imposed or threatened third countries with visa bans, tariffs, and other trade barriers, as detailed in the country sections. The Trump administration also has provided funding to some of the third countries, including for migration and border enforcement, defense, and condoned corruption, repression, and violations of human rights by governments in third countries.
Third Country Deportation Watch has tracked that the U.S. government has paid at least $44 million to third country governments in direct connection with the agreements (which does not include the costs of flights).
Other U.S. incentives are more indirect. Some deals seem to be tied to U.S. support for public health or other aid, albeit more restricted and limited than the United States provided in the past given massive U.S. cuts in humanitarian aid since January 2025. The administration has also diverted State Department funding formerly devoted to support and services for refugees abroad to these agreements. Indeed, the administration has made funding available to the United Nations Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration in countries with existing agreements so that they can work with transferred migrants and asylum seekers. The agreements may continue to push other countries to violate their human rights commitments, further undermining the rule of law globally.
Is it legal?
The administration has used a range of tactics to attempt to justify these transfers, some in unprecedented ways. With respect to some of the transfers, the Trump administration has unlawfully invoked Constitutional authority to respond to an “invasion” and a centuries-old wartime law (the Alien Enemies Act, 50 U.S.C. §§ 21-24), casting people seeking safety as a threat. It has also unlawfully invoked other statutory provisions such as one regarding “suspension of entry” (8 U.S.C. § 1182(f)) for certain noncitizens, which was enacted long before codification of the Refugee Convention and its Protocol, and others addressing safe third country agreements (8 U.S.C. § 1158(a)(2)(A)) and countries to which people with final orders of removal may be removed (8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)).
Legal services organizations and immigrants have challenged the forced third country transfers in U.S. courts. Federal judges have already held them to be unlawful in several cases, including with respect to expulsions of Venezuelans to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, expulsions of asylum seekers under a Presidential Proclamation shutting down asylum access at the southern border, and forced transfers of people with final orders of removal—including those granted humanitarian protections—without notice or opportunity to raise a fear claim about the third country. In some cases, the Trump administration has nonetheless carried out forced transfers in direct violation of court orders in effect at the time. It has also appealed court orders—leading to a temporary stay of some decisions—and continued to forcibly transfer people to harm in third countries while litigation is ongoing.
Additional legal challenges include ongoing litigation against the administration’s Asylum Cooperative Agreements. Attorneys have also successfully challenged forced third country transfers in individual cases, including by litigating habeas corpus claims in federal court. However, in multiple cases in April 2026, the Trump administration re-arrested and removed to third countries people who had been granted withholding of removal by an immigration judge and released from detention after prevailing on a habeas claim challenging the legality of their detention. Attorneys have had some success opposing the government’s efforts to pretermit asylum cases under ACAs. Additional guidance for attorneys is included in the resources page of this site.
Lawyers and members of civil society in third countries have brought challenges in their courts and international and regional bodies regarding their governments’ treatment—including detention, refoulement, and other human rights violations—of those transferred by the United States to their counties. Politicians in third countries have demanded more transparency regarding the agreements and other governments have at times refused to sign third country agreements and denied requests for transfers from the Trump administration.
Members of the U.S. Congress and international bodies have condemned the unlawfulness of forced transfers and the lack of transparency around the agreements.
How is the administration using Asylum Cooperative Agreements to pretermit cases in immigration court?
The administration has pretermitted—refused to consider on the merits—over 15,225 asylum applications and subsequently ordered the removal of these individuals to third countries with which the United States has signed Asylum Cooperative Agreements. In the second half of 2025 and the first few months of 2026, government attorneys frequently filed motions to pretermit with respect to one or multiple third countries, making it extremely difficult for a person to contest the motion and make a case against removal to those countries, particularly if unrepresented.
After pretermitting a person’s case, the government might detain them for prolonged periods. On March 13, 2026, DHS directed ICE attorneys to halt filing new motions to pretermit asylum claims per the ACAs but not to withdraw motions that were already pending. ICE attorneys continue to argue in support of pretermission motions and judges continue to pretermit cases.
As of March 2026, the organization Mobile Pathways has used publicly available Executive Office of Immigration Review data to track 15,225 pretermissions of individual asylum cases with an Asylum Cooperative Agreement country (Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, or Uganda) listed as the first country of removal for non-nationals of those countries. Third Country Deportation Watch estimates that between 100 and 200 third country nationals have been removed under the Asylum Cooperative Agreements (to Ecuador, Honduras, and Uganda). Pretermissions seem aimed to throw out large numbers of asylum cases without consideration of the persecution or torture people fear, coerce people in need of protection to abandon their claims rather than face an order of removal to a third country, deter people from seeking protection in the United States, and put vulnerable people at risk of harm in U.S. detention or through removal to a third country.
What are Forced third country transfers?
We are using this term to describe the deportation or expulsion of individuals from the United States to third countries where they are not citizens and to which they are forcibly sent, often exposing them to harm or the risk of chain refoulement. These transfers occur through various bilateral agreements and arrangements between the United States and other governments.
What are Enforced Disappearances?
The arrest, detention, abduction, or other deprivation of a person’s liberty by state agents—or by others with the state’s approval, support, or acquiescence—followed by a refusal to acknowledge the detention or by hiding the person’s fate or whereabouts. This places the person outside the protection of the law.
What is arbitrary detention?
Arbitrary detention is the deprivation of liberty that lacks a legal basis, such as conviction for a crime, or, even when tethered to a cause and authorized by law, is unreasonable or disproportionate and carried out without due process. Detention is considered arbitrary when individuals are detained without relation to their own actions, not promptly informed of the reasons for their detention, are denied access to judicial review or the ability to challenge its lawfulness, are held for prolonged or indefinite periods, or are detained in a discriminatory manner. Even where domestic law permits detention, it may still be arbitrary if it is unnecessary or lacks justification or adequate procedural safeguards.