Immigration officers with the Department of Homeland Security now make thousands of arrests a day across the country, including people seeking asylum who, under US law and international treaties such as the UN Convention Against Torture, should not be deported to any country where they could face persecution or torture.
To work around these protections, the Trump administration has sought alternative destinations through bilateral agreements or informal understandings with a growing list of countries. The non-profit organisations Refugees International and Human Rights First estimate that more than 25,000 people have been forcibly deported to third countries since January 2025, based on media reports and information from attorneys.
The Department of Homeland Security's own data, provided to the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley and UCLA and analysed by Al Jazeera, records more than 16,000 third-country deportations between January 2025 and August 2026, the latest month available. Researchers say the figure is likely an undercount.
Critics of the practice, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations, say some of the countries receiving deportees have poor human rights records or are so dangerous that the US government warns its own citizens not to travel there. UN experts have described the policy as causing a "cascade of human rights violations" that threatens international norms for refugee protection.
Third-country deportations were extremely rare before the Trump administration, according to rights groups. Some US courts have ruled the practice illegal, but the Supreme Court allowed it to continue in a September 2026 ruling.