By Ameen Kimdar, US Policy
Deportations and tariffs have been on the top of the agenda for the White House since the beginning of the second Trump administration in January of this year. Running on a campaign of populism and nationalism, Donald Trump promised supporters that the United States would make a show of strength by forcibly removing foreign nationals from the country by any means necessary and by putting an end to “unfair” trade deals that benefited foreign countries more than the US. Prior to entering office, experts anticipated that Trump’s foreign policy would be based on a reciprocal approach to diplomacy, viewing relationships as “transactional” (Cha 2024). Both policies, mass deportations and protectionist trade policies, have become intertwined tools in a larger strategy of coercive diplomacy. In particular, the administration’s usage of third-country deportations, the practice of deporting individuals to a country that they have no connection with, demonstrates how immigration enforcement has become a bargaining chip to achieve goals in trade policy and other foreign policy areas that the US has an interest in.
The White House has leveraged tariff threats and other intimidation tactics to persuade smaller, often-aid dependent developing nations in Latin America, Africa and Asia into accepting deportees from countries unrelated to their own. Likewise, cooperation on deportations has been used as a precondition for favorable trade terms and tariff exemptions. This practice has drawn controversy within the United States from migrant rights organizations and from countries that have resisted or opposed becoming a “dumping ground” for immigrants. However, many countries have welcomed this approach to dealing with the US, and have leveraged their position as an easy way to get on the US’ good side in other areas such as trade policy.
During the first Trump administration, one of the largest challenges that ICE officials faced was deported migrants’ home countries refusing to accept their citizens back. In 2017, the US put visa restrictions on Eritrea, Cambodia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone for refusing to accept thousands of migrants that had been convicted of crimes in the United States and were sentenced to deportation. ICE officials claimed that sanctions were necessary to pressure these countries into accepting deportees out of US custody (Nixon 2017). Among other issues, the second Trump administration has taken a much more aggressive direction with achieving policy goals, and the introduction of third-country deportations have become a major part of its immigration policy.
Beginning at the start of Trump’s return to the White House, 5000 migrants were sent on military aircraft to Guatemala and Mexico (Stewart and Ali 2025), while Colombia’s left-wing president Gustavo Petro refused to accept what he described as “inhumane” treatment of migrants. After Trump threatened massive tariffs and visa suspensions on Colombia, Petro was forced to back down and accept deportations via military aircraft, as the US is the largest trading partner of the South American nation (Stewart and Griffin 2025).
In February, aggressive deportations escalated, with the first recorded instance of third-country deportations occurring in Panama and Costa Rica. Three flights carrying 300 deportees from Africa and Central Asia arrived in Panama, where they were first held in a hotel, and those who refused were sent to a prison camp in the jungle (Wong et al. 2025). Later that month, Costa Rica accepted 200 deportees from China, India, Nepal and Yemen (Wong et al. 2025). Almost all of the US deportees in Central America were later released and sent to their countries of origin after their lawyers sued the governments holding them (Wong et al. 2025). This occurred amidst massive pressure on Panama from Trump, who had publicly stated a desire to regain control of the Panama Canal, which had been returned to the small country in 1977 by Democratic president Jimmy Carter. Panama is an important destination for migrants crossing the Darien gap between South and Central America en route to the United States (Zamorano 2025).
One of the most publicized cases of third-country deportations occurred in the following month, when hundreds of accused Venezuelan gang members were sent to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT prison. Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, a close ideological partner with Trump, has garnered international attention for his extreme measures on gang violence, an issue that has plagued the nation for decades. On the other hand, Venezuela has severed ties with the United States since 2019, due to ideological differences and US support for the Venezuelan opposition. The US paid El Salvador roughly $6 million to host the alleged Venezuelan gangsters in their maximum-security prison, and invoked a “zombie” law from 1798 to authorize the decision, the Alien Enemies Act, which permits the president to deport noncitizens during wartime (Al Jazeera 2025). Venezuelan deportees were also accepted by Honduras, a country that has experienced strained relations with the US in recent years for its close relations with Venezuela. Honduran president Xioamara Castro had previously threatened to expel a US military base in the country over threats of mass deportations, but buckled under US pressure (Olivares 2025). Trump officials claimed that the migrants were a part of a criminal gang known as Tren de Aragua, which he has also accused of being tied to the Venezuelan government, which CIA and NSA sources have disputed (Olivares 2025). Among the deportees was Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man living in the US legally, wrongfully deported in an “administrative error” (Al Jazeera 2025).
By summer, the third-country deportations expanded into Africa, where human rights groups have expressed the most amount of concern for the safety and wellbeing of migrants. In early Julyeight migrants convicted of robbery, murder, and sexual assault were deported to South Sudan that the State Department has listed as unsafe for American citizens to visit. Only one of the migrants was actually from South Sudan, while the rest were from Myanmar, Mexico, Cuba, Vietnam and Laos. This occurred after a legal battle while the migrants were being temporarily detained in a shipping container in the small African nation of Djibouti (Hagan 2025). Earlier, the Trump administration had revoked all South Sudanese visas and accused the world’s youngest nation of “taking advantage of the US” by refusing to take deportees (Al Jazeera 2025). The following week, the US deported five migrants convicted of crimes including child rape and murder to the tiny southern African country of Eswatini, despite all of the men coming from Vietnam, Laos, Jamaica, Cuba and Yemen. Commentators noted that Eswatini, an absolute monarchy with a poor human rights record, is dependent on the US for its largest export, sugar (Muia 2025). By August, deportations extended to Uganda, a country that had previously experienced strained relations with the US under the Biden administration for its anti-LGBTQ laws, and is also severely threatened by US sanctions on its agricultural exports (Lawal 2025). Rwanda, another African country with a poor human rights record, accepted seven US deportees from unrelated countries (Fleming 2025). Rwanda has cooperated with Israel and the UK on deportations, which was struck down by the UK Supreme Court over human rights violations in Rwanda (Sharma 2025). Nigeria, Africa’s most populated country, refused to cooperate on Venezuelan deportations, and was hit with visa restrictions, which the US embassy in Abuja denied was related to migration policy (Booty 2025). Later, Ghana accepted deportations of Nigerians, and denied they were being held in prisons in Ghana, rather they were sent back to their home countries (Riccardi 2025). On the other hand, Burkina Faso, which has become fiercely hostile towards the US in recent years, refused to accept any deportations on an ideological basis (Banchereau 2025). Outside of Africa, partially-recognized Kosovo has accepted 50 migrants, promising to return them home (Camilo 2025).
A New York Times investigation found that the State Department has approached 51 countries across the developing world to accept deportations in exchange for concessions in other areas, including foreign aid and trade policy. A State Department cable identified Angola, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Rwanda, Togo, Mauritania, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan as target countries for third-country deportations, in spite of abysmal human rights violations and civil wars occurring in most of these countries (Wong et al. 2025). Leaked documents showed the State Department pressured war-torn Ukraine into accepting third-country deportations as a part of conditions on receiving aid from its primary benefactor (Taylor et al. 2025). Prior to a White House meeting with leaders from Liberia, Senegal, Mauritania, Gabon and Guinea-Bissau, US officials requested that these countries cooperate with deportations, as these countries have been reeling from the consequences of the cancellation of USAID (Gramer et al. 2025).
The Trump administration’s usage of third-country deportations have become emblematic of its aggressive and transactional foreign policy, with countries gaining favorable positions on trade policy and their human rights records if they help Trump achieve his domestic goals. While some governments have resisted, it appears that they cannot afford trade wars with the US.
As previously mentioned, these deportations have faced several legal challenges and have garnered controversy by migrant rights organizations. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) allows the Department of Homeland Security to deport migrants to countries other than their country of origin, but the nature of these deportations have been challenged in court (Metzler 2025). Federal courts initially blocked the South Sudan deportations on the grounds that they were not protected from torture, but the Supreme Court allowed for the deportations to occur anyways (Charalambous and Garcia 2025). In another case, federal courts ruled that they were unable to prevent Trump from carrying out deportations to Ghana (Cameron 2025).
Another source of contention regarding third-country deportations is the necessity of the process altogether. Lawyers representing Mexican nationals deported to Libya and South Sudan claimed that the Trump administration never actually asked Mexico about accepting these deportations, which was corroborated by Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum (Cooke and Hesson 2025). They also noted that Mexico has accepted thousands of deportees in the past, implying that the home country governments of deportees are not being properly informed of deportations. They instead suggested that the intention of third-country deportations is to intimidate migrants into self-deporting to avoid being sent to a much more hostile foreign country. A similar view was expressed by Doris Meissner, former Commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service under Bill Clinton, stating the reason for third-country deportations to be “fear and intimidation and ultimately, incentivizing self deportation” (Montoya-Galvez 2025).
In spite of legal challenges and human rights concerns, the Trump administration hasn’t slowed down the usage of third-country deportations. Instead, it has double downed on the as a deterrent and a display of strength, framing it as a restoration of American sovereignty. Supporters of the policy view it as a necessary move to correct what they view as decades of exploitation of the US in trade and migration policy by weaker countries. Critics view it as a deliberate violation of human rights and international norms to intimidate migrants into not entering the US and pressure foreign countries to accept US trade terms. Regardless of their true intentions and legal challenges, third-country deportations have become a major weapon of Trump’s coercive diplomacy.
References
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