State Dept: Trump’s “Third Countries” for Immigrants Have Awful Human Rights Records

The United States is building an unprecedented network of deportee dumping grounds, pursuing deals with around a third of the world’s nations to expel immigrants to places where they do not hold citizenship. Once exiled, these third-country nationals are sometimes detained, imprisoned, or in danger of being sent back to their country of origin — which they may have fled to escape violence, torture, or political persecution.

The nations that the Trump administration is collaborating with to accept these expelled immigrants are some of the worst human rights offenders on the planet, according to the U.S. government’s own reports.

More than 8,100 people have been expelled in this manner since January 20, and the U.S. has made arrangements to send people to at least 13 nations, so far, across the globe. Of them, 12 have been cited by the State Department for significant human rights abuses.

But the Trump administration has cast a much wider net for its third-country deportations. The U.S. has solicited 64 nations to participate in its growing global gulag for expelled immigrants. Fifty-eight of them — roughly 91 percent — were rebuked for human rights violations in the State Department’s most recent human rights reports.

America’s preferred third-country deportee dumping grounds also receive uniform low marks from outside human rights groups. Only four of the 13 countries that have agreed to accept people forcibly expelled from the U.S. — Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama — in 2025 were rated “free” by Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization that advocates for democracy and human rights and gets the bulk of its funding from the U.S. government. The rest of the countries – El Salvador, Eswatini, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Mexico, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Uzbekistan — were rated “partly free” or “not free.”

“It is not surprising the governments that would agree to these sketchy third-country removal arrangements would be countries with serious pre-existing human rights issues,” said Anwen Hughes, the senior director of legal strategy for refugee programs at Human Rights First. “But it is shocking that the United States would seek to remove third-country nationals to these destinations.” 

The most recent additions to America’s global gulag are among the least free countries on the planet. This month, the administration expelled five men — from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam, and Yemen — to the Southern African kingdom of Eswatini, an absolute monarchy with a dismal human rights record. The move closely followed the U.S. deportation of eight men to violence-plagued South Sudan, one of the most repressive nations in the world. South Sudan is Freedom House’s lowest rated nation, scoring 1/100. Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, scored 17/100, worse than perennial bad actors like Egypt and Ethiopia.

“The Trump administration cares nothing for human rights and wants these deportations to third countries to be punitive,” Yael Schacher, the director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, told The Intercept.

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could resume expelling immigrants to countries other than their own without any chance to object on the grounds that they might be tortured. The court’s decision has been a boon to the administration, which has been employing strong-arm tactics with dozens of smaller, weaker, and economically dependent nations to push them to accept expelled people. Trump cheered the court’s decision in a White House statement earlier this month.

“I say this unapologetically, we are actively searching for other countries to take people from third countries,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at an April 30 Cabinet meeting. “We are working with other countries to say, ‘We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries, and will you do that as a favor to us?’”

The Trump administration has sought or struck deals with or deported third-country nationals to Angola, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Libya, Kosovo, Malawi, Mauritania, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Palau, Panama, Peru, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, The Gambia, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Zambia, and Zimbabwe; these 58 were taken to task by the State Department last year for significant human rights abuses. Tuvalu and Santa Lucia were also cited in the report for having repressive laws on paper but were not found to enforce them in practice. Only four of the 64 total nations — Antigua and Barbuda, Cabo Verde, Costa Rica, and Saint Kitts and Nevis — received a clean bill of human rights health from the State Department.

With the green light from the Supreme Court, thousands of immigrants are in danger of being disappeared into this burgeoning network of pariah states. The recent budget bill, passed in Congress, will provide the Trump administration tens of billions of dollars to arrest, detain and expel immigrants. Some $14.4 billion is marked for new ICE transportation funds — a massive increase above the agency’s 2024 transportation and removal budget. “You’re going to see immigration enforcement on a level you’ve never seen it before,” said Trump’s so-called border czar Tom Homan, referring to the newfound largesse.

“When you’ve got countries that won’t take their nationals back, and they can’t stay here, we find another country willing to accept them,” Homan said, adding that the administration may not necessarily expel people to every country that agrees to accept third-country nationals, but wants the option on hand.

Experts say that third-country deportations are rooted in cruelty and not a lack of deportation options. Hughes, of Human Rights First, noted that Mexican nationals held in south Texas had been set to be deported to both Libya and South Sudan. (The Libya deportations were eventually blocked in court.)

“The Mexican border is right there. I’ve been doing immigration detention work for a very long time. I’ve never in my life seen Mexico refuse to take back one of its nationals, ever,” Hughes told The Intercept, noting that the administration appeared to be seeking out “really implausible destinations to send people.”

In April, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that her government had already accepted roughly 6,000 non-Mexicans from the U.S. for “humanitarian reasons.” Mexico has agreed to accept “third-country removals” from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, said Thomas Giles, a longtime ICE official, during a recent federal court hearing. The Mexican government has refused to offer further information on third-country expulsions, although return receipts show spokespersons Alba Gardenia Mejía Abreu and Lourdes Fabiola Garita Arce have repeatedly read The Intercept’s questions on the subject.

While Mexico has been the largest recipient of third-country nationals in 2025, a growing number of other countries, from Latin America to Africa, have forged deals with the U.S. and accepted deportees from elsewhere.

In February, Guatemala, a country where “human rights defenders, journalists and political opponents were harassed and criminalized” last year, according to Amnesty International, announced it had struck a deal with the Trump administration to accept third-country nationals. The country has received around 110 Mexicans this year, according to data obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by a team of lawyers and academics from the Deportation Data Project.

Honduras received around 650 Venezuelans this year, while around 560 Hondurans were expelled by the U.S. to Mexico, according to data from the Deportation Data Project. The researchers also found that Canada received a small number of people from India and that Colombia has received Venezuelan deportees.

The Trump administration has expelled hundreds of African and Asian immigrants to Costa Rica and Panama, including people from Afghanistan, Cameroon, China, India, Iran, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

The administration also began using the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, as a foreign prison to disappear Venezuelan immigrants in March. Andry Hernández Romero, a Venezuelan make-up artist who was expelled by the United States to the offshore prison, was recently released from CECOT following a prisoner swap with Venezuela. He said he was abused, sexually assaulted, and denied food, describing his time there as “an encounter with torture and death.”

Uzbekistan received more than 100 deportees from the United States, including not only Uzbeks but citizens of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, according to an April announcement by the Department of Homeland Security. The U.S. also inked a limited agreement with Rwanda while exploring a more “durable program.” Amnesty International recently called out that East African nation over reports of forced disappearances and evidence of torture and other ill treatment in detention.

The U.S. struck a deal with Europe’s youngest country, Kosovo, in June, to accept 50 deportees from other nations. Kosovo has already made an agreement with Denmark to rent out 300 prison cells for foreign nationals convicted of crimes who will be deported from Denmark at the end of their sentences. Human Rights Watch has warned the Balkans may become “a warehouse for migrants.”

Earlier this month, the U.S. expelled eight men to the newest nation on the planet, South Sudan. The State Department’s most recent assessment of the East African nation catalogs an enormous range of serious abuses, including reports of extrajudicial killings; disappearances by or on behalf of government authorities; instances in which “security forces mutilated, tortured, beat, and harassed political opponents, journalists, and human rights activists,” including documented cases of torture and other mistreatment of those in the custody of the National Security Service, such as beatings with sticks, whips, pipes, and wires; being subjected to electric shocks; being burned with melted plastic; raped; and subjected to other forms of sexual violence.

Beyond that, South Sudan is subject to a U.N. warning about the potential for full-scale civil war and a State Department “Level 4: Do Not Travel” advisory. The department advises those who choose to go there to draft a will, establish a proof-of-life protocol with family members, and leave DNA samples with one’s medical provider.

The Trump administration renounced responsibility for the men it expelled to South Sudan. Asked whether they were in U.S. or South Sudanese custody, Homan lied. “They’re free,” the White House executive associate director of enforcement and removal operations told Politico. “They’re living in Sudan.” Neither part of his statement is true. The eight men have been held incommunicado in South Sudan — not Sudan — for weeks by the National Security Service. They have been unable to contact their lawyers or their families. The White House did not reply to repeated questions about Homan’s statement.

Soon after the South Sudan expulsions, on July 15, the administration expelled five men — from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam, and Yemen — to Eswatini. The State Department’s most recent human rights report on that kingdom refers to credible reports of arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; and the incarceration of political prisoners. The five men will reportedly be held in solitary confinement for an undetermined amount of time.

The government of Eswatini said the men are considered “in transit” and will eventually be sent to their home countries. Eswatini’s assertion that the men would be sent to their homelands contradicted claims by DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, who wrote on X that the deportees were “so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.”

The Trump administration’s third-country deportation deals are being conducted in secret, and neither the State Department nor the Department of Homeland Security will discuss them.

Lt. Gen. John W. Brennan, U.S. Africa Command’s deputy commander, told The Intercept no discussions of third-country deportations took place during his recent high-level engagements with Angola and Namibia and directed queries on the matter to DHS.

A State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to arcane departmental rules, also repeatedly insisted that “deportations are squarely in DHS’s way” and answers to The Intercept’s questions were actually “a DHS issue.” When The Intercept countered that the agreements were made by the State Department, the official asked: “Who’s the [point of contact] negotiating these agreements?” Asked if the official was admitting that the State Department had abdicated its diplomatic responsibilities to DHS, the official said: “No, I’m not. I’m not saying that. I don’t know.”

The latter refrain is common among government officials. “When we sign these agreements with all these countries, we make arrangements to make sure these countries are receiving these people and there’s opportunities for these people,” Homan claimed before admitting he was flummoxed by the agreements. “But I can’t tell if we remove somebody to Sudan — they can stay there a week and leave. I don’t know.”

The Intercept could find no corroborative information about a third-country deportation agreement with Sudan. The White House failed to respond to repeated requests for clarification.

 

Experts questioned the U.S. making deals with some of the world’s worst human rights offenders. “Generally speaking, there aren’t obvious reasons for a government to want to accept deportees who have no connection to their country. The countries that make these agreements are going to be the most desperate and may want concessions that they can’t obtain by other means,” said Hughes, who is also one of the lawyers representing the men exiled to South Sudan. “The U.S. government should be asking itself: ‘To what extent does it make sense to allow migration issues to run foreign policy?’ and ‘What, exactly, is the U.S. willing to bargain away for the sake of deporting a relatively small number of people?’”

“What, exactly, is the U.S. willing to bargain away for the sake of deporting a relatively small number of people?”

Due to the secret nature of agreements, it is unclear what fate awaits people expelled to these outcast nations. The question of whether they would be deported again to their nation of origin, or another unrelated nation, where they face the possibility of persecution or abuse; be allowed to remain in the third country and under what circumstances; or be held in detention or prison, as in El Salvador, remains unknown.

Some people, including those expelled to South Sudan, also appear to have been sent without identification or travel documents, potentially leaving individuals in a legal limbo.

“Removing people by putting people on military or private aircraft that the United States entirely controls and then dumping them in countries that are willing to take them, without identification? This is new and dangerous,” said Hughes. “It’s not clear that there are any consistent requirements in terms of what status people will be issued or even if the U.S. is providing clear and accurate information to the receiving country as to these people’s legal situation.”

Experts have warned that while almost all African countries and nations in the Americas are parties to the U.N. Refugee Convention, countries like Kosovo and Uzbekistan are not. If they were to expel immigrants they received as part of their deals with the Trump administration, they would have no obligation under international law to screen deportees to ensure they are not sent to a country where they may face threats to their life or freedom.

Non-refoulement — derived from a French word for return — forbids sending people to places where they are at risk of harm. It is a bedrock principle of international human rights, refugee, and customary international law, and is embedded in U.S. domestic law. The Trump administration has not only abandoned this obligation but will also look the other way regarding violations by other nations.

State Department employees were recently instructed that future installments of its human rights reports — the same type that The Intercept relied on for this reporting — should ignore whether a nation had violated its obligations not to send people to countries where they would face torture or persecution. A State Department official failed to respond to repeated questions by The Intercept concerning the role the Trump administration’s own third-country deportations played in the new directive. 

Experts told The Intercept that the change in State Department policy was no coincidence, and the delay in issuing the annual reports — which are usually released in the spring — was likely tied, at least in part, to the administration’s third-country deportations and its willingness to flout international law. Trina Realmuto, the executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance and another lawyer for the men expelled to South Sudan, offered her own assessment.

“It seems that leadership,” she explained, “is trying to eliminate the State Department’s reporting on human rights violations and non-refoulement because they evidence the hypocrisy of its third country removal policy.”

The post State Dept: Trump’s “Third Countries” for Immigrants Have Awful Human Rights Records appeared first on The Intercept.