During the second term of the Trump presidency, the administration has broadened the use of “third-country deportations,” employing them not only as punishment but also to remove migrants who had already been granted protection against repatriation in their home countries. A recent report highlights how this tactic is being expanded.
CBS News reported on Tuesday that federal authorities have been deporting Mexican nationals to Guatemala and Honduras, even though Mexico has indicated it will accept the return of its own citizens. The Mexican foreign ministry stated that “the Government of Mexico accepts the return of all its nationals. It therefore rejects the deportation of Mexican nationals to third countries and has no such agreement in place,” and added that Mexico consistently takes the steps necessary to guarantee the safe and dignified return of all its nationals to their own territory.
Guatemala confirmed receiving roughly 2,300 Mexican nationals this year. President Bernardo Arévalo said, “They are arriving on planes carrying Guatemalan returnees,” and added that the authorities have treated them as in-transit, coordinating with Mexican immigration officials.
According to two anonymous officials from the Department of Homeland Security who spoke with CBS, the aim of this approach is to deter illegal immigration from Mexico by creating more distance between the deportees and the U.S.–Mexico border. Yet its effectiveness remains questionable in practice. Arévalo noted that the migrants spent less than a day in the receiving country before being sent back to Mexico, and that the costs were borne by either the United States or Mexico.
Third-country deportations are generally reserved for two scenarios: when courts decide that a person cannot be deported to their home country because they would likely face violence or persecution there, or when the home country has fraught relations with the United States—such as Iran or Cuba—and refuses to accept deportees. Nevertheless, the pattern of deportations to third countries continues to accumulate.
In April, for instance, the government transported a group of 15 South American migrants—who had been granted humanitarian protections in the United States—to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country currently grappling with an Ebola outbreak. A 2022 State Department report notes that more than a dozen significant armed groups and about 100 criminal gangs and local militias operate in the DRC, including a regional ISIS affiliate. A Colombian woman who spoke to Reuters had been granted withholding of removal to Colombia after a judge found she would likely face torture there; instead, she was sent to the DRC, where conditions are so dangerous that she felt there was no viable long-term option and that she was pressured to agree to return to her country, despite the risks.
This practice, whereby sending someone to a third country becomes a step toward returning them to a country from which they had been legally protected, is known as “chain refoulement.”
The United States has established agreements with a broad slate of third countries. For example, groups of migrants have been deported to Equatorial Guinea, a nation governed by a dictatorship and criticized for its human rights record. The country earned a 5 out of 100 on Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2025 report, ranking just above North Korea. Deportees are confined to the Bamy Hotel, a facility owned by the family of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, and many have been sent back to the home countries from which they had protection.
Ahmed Soliman is one such deportee. He was sent on a flight to Equatorial Guinea in April. Soliman, now 30, came to the United States at age four after his family fled Egypt; his father had drawn the government’s ire for criticizing then-president Hosni Mubarak. He has not lived in Egypt for years and does not speak the language. After spending two years in prison over charges related to a fentanyl addiction, Soliman was placed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. A U.S. judge had granted him protection from removal to Egypt, yet he was sent to Equatorial Guinea, where several deportees held at the Bamy Hotel were recently assaulted by guards, according to reporting by the Arizona Daily Star.
As with many in his situation, Soliman may ultimately end up back in Egypt despite having been granted protection from going there and having spent nearly his entire life in the United States.
