U.S. Third-Country Deportation Agreements Are More About Fear than Numbers

The Trump administration’s mass deportations agenda includes a focus on deporting some unauthorized immigrants to countries other than where they were born. This effort has become a core foreign policy goal for the U.S. government as it engages with countries around the world. The administration has struck third-country deportation agreements with governments across the globe, ranging from small island nations such as Palau to ones including South Sudan that are experiencing conflict.

In its first term, the administration tested the concept with early iterations signed with three governments in northern Central America. But how it has negotiated and leveraged third-country agreements in its second term marks a sharp turn, both in degree of emphasis and in rationale. Since the start of the second Trump term, U.S. officials have entered into deportation agreements with 27 countries, in some cases under pressure, and planned to reach out to at least 54 others. And compared to the first-term trio of agreements focused on deterring asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border, the new ones are now a key part of the administration’s interior enforcement agenda.  

The number of people deported under these agreements has so far been a fraction of the total deportations conducted by the Trump administration because, except for Mexico, most countries have agreed to accept at most a few hundred deportees. The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates about 15,000 third-country deportations (13,000 of them to Mexico) occurred between January 20, 2025, and December 31, 2025—a tiny share of the 1 million annual deportations the administration has said it intends to achieve.

As a result, it appears the focus on expanding deportations to third countries is less about achieving numbers than it is incentivizing people to  “self-deport” or deterring would-be irregular arrivals by making clear their future could be completely out of their hands if they are sent to countries such as Ecuador, Eswatini, or Uzbekistan, where they have no ties.

Conditions for Return to a Third Country under U.S. Law

Existing U.S. law requires meeting a number of steps to deport immigrants to a country other than where they were born. The receiving government must provide “sufficient reliable assurances” that deportees will not be persecuted or tortured or sent to another country where they would be. The signatory governments then must agree on and specify the populations (e.g. single adults, particular nationalities, convicted criminals) that the receiving government is willing to accept and under what conditions. The Guatemalan government, for example, agreed to receive only Central American deportees.

There is no one-size-fits-all model for the existing 27 agreements, though it is difficult to evaluate them because in most cases their text has not been made public by the U.S. or participating governments. In some cases, the governments have provided only broad-brush details about the agreements and in others it is not even clear what the U.S. government is providing in exchange.

Safe Third Country Agreement or Not?

Some of these agreements are considered to be “safe third country agreements,” as defined under U.S. law, and apply to individuals seeking asylum in the United States. Under a safe third country agreement, the U.S. government must determine not only that deportees will not be persecuted in the receiving country, but also that they will “have access to a full and fair procedure” to seek asylum or other equivalent protection there.

Canada and the United States signed the first safe third country agreement in 2002; it remains, with modification, in effect today. None followed until 2019, when the Trump administration during its first term signed “asylum cooperation agreements” with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, designating them the equivalent of a safe third country agreement. Of the three accords, only the one with Guatemala was implemented. All three were suspended by the Biden administration in 2021.

Most of Today’s Agreements Are Not Safe Third Country Ones

The Trump administration has redefined the types, terms, and legal limits of third-country arrangements. The full conditions are not possible to assess, given these agreements run the gamut from verbal accords to diplomatic notes and formal agreements published in the Federal Register.

They can, however, be categorized into four broad types:

Safe third country/asylum cooperation agreements: Defined above, these are treated as equivalent by the Trump administration. Ecuador, for instance, has agreed to receive up to 300 asylum seekers per year from the United States and provide them an opportunity to seek protection.

Deportation bridge agreements: The receiving government commits to hold deportees, sometimes in a detention center, without access to asylum while it negotiates their removal to their country of origin or another country. This form of arrangement was perhaps most visible last year, when Panama agreed to receive nearly 300 deportees, primarily from Asian countries, initially holding them in a city hotel and subsequently transferring some of them to a shelter near the Darien jungle.  

Incarceration agreements: The foreign government agrees to hold deportees sent from the United States, likely without a criminal conviction in the receiving country, and without access to protection. This was the case when El Salvador agreed to receive more than 200 Venezuelans, whom the Trump administration alleged were members of the transnational gang known as Tren de Aragua, and incarcerated them in its maximum-security prison.

Hybrid agreements: Under these arrangements, the receiving government may agree to a combination of elements in the other types of deals, such as allowing some deportees to stay in the country but without a guarantee to access protection or a durable status while returning others to their country of origin. Under an agreement originally negotiated by the Biden administration and continued and perhaps expanded under the Trump administration, Mexico receives deportees at ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border and transports them to southern Mexico. It does not, though, provide them protection or a legal status necessary to stay and access basic services. So far under the Trump administration, 6,000 Cubans have accounted for the majority of deportees sent to Mexico.

There is insufficient public information to categorize another ten agreements (see Table 1).

A Lack of Detail Around a New U.S. Foreign Policy Priority

The secrecy of negotiations between the Trump administration and foreign governments, as well as the varying levels of formality for the agreements, have drawn significant controversy and legal challenges abroad. Generally, governments have entered into these agreements to avoid the imposition of U.S. tariffs or visa revocations, and in some cases to continue receiving U.S. humanitarian aid.

But governments that enter into these agreements often lack the infrastructure and resources to receive and reintegrate their own citizen returnees, let alone nationals of other countries. And while some agreements include U.S. funding to pay for deportees to be incarcerated or subsequently deported—for instance, the Trump administration committed to pay Rwanda $7.5 million and Eswatini $5.1 million—most do not provide receiving governments any direct funding to strengthen their asylum systems or offer necessary services to deportees.

Given the apparent lack of fully negotiated details in some of the arrangements, receiving governments have at times expressed confusion about their responsibilities and deportees have been left in legal limbo thousands of miles away from the United States. In Costa Rica, for example, a court ruled that the government had violated deportees’ rights when it detained them and did not inform them about the option to apply for asylum there. As a result, the deportees were released and given the option to seek asylum or depart voluntarily.

In other cases, without sufficient information from the United States, receiving governments may, in violation of international law, subsequently send deportees to another country where they could be persecuted or tortured.

A Focus on Fear, Not Large-Scale Deportations

Because of limited data provided to the public by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the overall number of deportations carried out since President Donald Trump took office cannot be ascertained. But MPI estimates that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted 396,000 deportations in the administration’s first year back. This does not account for deportations by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which includes the Border Patrol.

Given MPI’s estimate that about 15,000 deportations have been carried out to third countries, these represent a fraction of all deportations during the second Trump term. The majority, to Mexico, have been carried out with notably less international attention than the ones to countries in Asia and Africa.

Further, despite the lower numbers, the removals to Asia and Africa are significantly more costly than the land transfers the U.S. government carries out routinely at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The numbers are a fraction of the scale needed to meet the administration’s objective of 1 million deportations yearly. Instead, the administration appears to be employing third-country deportation agreements to incite fear among unauthorized immigrants, adding to the climate of fear methodically created with highly visible immigration enforcement operations, the vast scaling-up of immigration detention, and other actions. Threatening to deport individuals to a country where they have no ties or ability to speak the local language helps advance the goal of mass deportations by pressuring unauthorized immigrants to abandon their claim for asylum or other form of relief, accept deportation to their country of origin, or depart voluntarily.

For example, ICE memos instruct agents to identify and detain immigrants granted withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture—in other words, individuals who had final removal orders but could not be deported to their country of origin on grounds they might be persecuted or harmed—so that they could be deported to a third country. Separately, government lawyers asked immigration judges to dismiss more than 1,000 asylum cases without a full hearing, proposing that the asylum seekers be sent to one of the countries that has signed a third-country agreement instead of the country to which they have a fear of return. 

The Future of Third-Country Deportations

Ongoing U.S. litigation is likely to ultimately determine the legality of the Trump administration’s third-country deportation agreements, even as legal challenges unfold in some of the partner countries as well.

In June 2025, the Supreme Court temporarily allowed the administration to expedite third-country deportations while the merits of the case were being litigated in lower court. The federal judge in that case, in Boston, ruled in February 2026 that immigrants must be given meaningful notice and time to raise country-specific objections, and he criticized safety assurances provided by third countries in their agreements with the United States. The Trump administration appealed the ruling, likely to be decided by the Supreme Court during its 2026-27 term.

Meanwhile, the administration appears to be negotiating agreements with countries it contacted last summer and others, such as Barbados, which have signaled openness to such arrangements. While critics have chafed at the lack of transparency in the details of agreements and evidence of the capacities and limits of receiving governments in implementing the terms, Congress has yet to take up the issue. It would also behoove governments receiving third-country deportees to proactively clarify their terms and responsibilities to avoid violating international law.

Very little is known about what has happened to the 15,000 or so individuals sent to third countries, nor is there systematic monitoring of compliance by partner countries.

Ultimately, these agreements are one of many punitive tools the Trump administration is deploying in its pursuit of achieving vast numbers of deportations. It remains to be seen whether the agreements will pass muster with the courts and whether they endure as a feature of U.S. immigration enforcement and U.S. diplomacy going forward.