By: Gavin Thorne – SeaPRwire – The United States is no longer returning people to their own countries. It is buying landing spots. Cash moves one way. Deportees move the other. Courts call parts of it illegal. The flights keep leaving.
Multiple outlets published joint investigations on 21 September 2026. They map a third-country removal program at the core of the Trump 2.0 immigration approach. Since 2025 the administration has sent more than 25,000 migrants, refugees and asylum seekers to countries that are not their origin. The Guardian, working with 23 other newsrooms under the Forbidden Stories Deportation Project, tracked more than 100 flights to 28 destinations. The real total is likely higher. Deals now cover 35 countries. Internal records show at least 410 million dollars approved or promised by the end of June to secure agreements with 31 African and Latin American states. Direct payments of 81 million dollars went to 13 of them. Contracts replaced normal aid channels and skipped human-rights conditions. Another 179 million dollars was pledged to the International Organization for Migration and 124 million dollars to the UN refugee agency for projects inside the receiving states. Both organizations deny being parties to the bilateral deals. Roughly 20,000 people were bused to Mexico. At least 5,000 boarded planes to Latin America, Africa, Central Asia and the Caribbean. Guatemala alone took in 2,848 Mexican citizens this year, 72 of them on 8 September. Mexico’s foreign ministry objects. Equatorial Guinea accepted a 7.5 million dollar arrangement for up to 250 people; more than 50 have already arrived. Some are held in a disused hotel in Malabo. Lawyers report harsh conditions. The government denies abuse. One documented case is the Iranian woman known as Nika. A judge had granted her a stay and she was released on 28 May. ICE re-arrested her on 8 June. On 11 June she was flown in shackles to Bangui, Central African Republic. She received no clear notice of the destination, arrived without documents, contracted malaria and faced tight movement limits. Receiving states set their own filters. Uganda takes only African nationals. The Democratic Republic of Congo rejects Africans. Some accept people with violent records. Others accept only non-violent ones. The administration says the focus is criminals. Interviewees include long-term U.S. residents, parents stopped on school runs and adults caring for elderly relatives. Several of the destinations appear in the State Department’s own human-rights reports for torture, arbitrary detention or security-force abuse. Deportees and their lawyers allege beatings, food denial and blocked contact with counsel or family. On 18 September the First Circuit in Boston ruled the practice unlawful when people are not given enough time to challenge the decision. The court said it may violate due process. Human-rights lawyers demanded an immediate halt to the flights. The Department of Homeland Security’s top lawyer replied that the ruling is not yet in effect. Policy continues. The administration is expected to seek Supreme Court review.
Official statements present the program as orderly enforcement. The State Department calls the involved officials diligent public servants working for American prosperity and security. The real mechanism is different. Deputy Secretary Chris Landau, once a Scalia clerk and ambassador to Mexico, steered the negotiations. A new 15-person Office of Remigration inside the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration executes the work. Its head, Deputy Assistant Secretary Christian Ehrhardt, spent two decades in State security protecting embassies. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Assistant Secretary Andrew Veprek drive the policy from above. Veprek is described by former colleagues as Miller’s bureaucratic implementer. Spencer Chretien, who came from White House personnel and Project 2025, reports daily to Veprek for oral instructions. The 1980 Refugee Act once anchored a system built to resettle people fleeing persecution. That system is now being turned into a removal machine. Early in the term foreign aid was frozen and grants screened for DEI language. The Department of Government Efficiency cut 92 percent of USAID spending and the agency was shut down. A 136-page reorganization memo to Congress created the Remigration Office. Staff inside the office report low morale. Some request transfers. Others resign. Vacancies are filled by people more aligned with the policy. Former officials say the contracts were designed to avoid congressional notification and ordinary human-rights safeguards. One left because the money was going to governments known for corruption. Asian Americans Advancing Justice litigation director Meredith Yin calls the deals a dangerous precedent that abandons post-World War II refugee commitments.
The pendulum has already swung. Money is buying capacity that domestic courts and statutes once blocked. Receiving governments treat the payments as leverage. Deportees land in places with no language, no network and sometimes no safety. The next test is whether the Supreme Court restores process or lets the contracts stand. Until then the flights will keep leaving and the cash will keep flowing.
Author bio: Gavin Thorne, overseas geopolitical commentator whose columns on migration, state power and human-rights trade-offs appear regularly in major international newspapers.