The practice of deporting individuals to third countries – nations to which they have no prior connection – continues to be a contentious issue under the Trump Administration, raising serious legal and humanitarian concerns. What began in with the widely criticized deportation of over two hundred Venezuelans to the notorious CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador has evolved, and expanded, over the past eleven months, according to recent reports and legal analysis.
While the initial El Salvador deportations drew immediate condemnation, the Administration has persistently employed this tactic, often justified by existing judicial orders preventing deportation to an individual’s home country due to the risk of persecution. However, the situation is far from straightforward. Numerous deportees have been subsequently sent *back* to their countries of origin after arriving in these third countries, while others remain indefinitely detained. A recent case involving nine individuals of various nationalities deported to Cameroon highlights the complexities and potential illegality of the practice.
The legal battles surrounding these deportations are intensifying. Ahilan Arulanantham, a law professor at U.C.L.A. And faculty co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy, explains a crucial distinction: the difference between arrangements where deportees are simply left in a third country, and those resulting in imprisonment. “I think it’s important to distinguish between third-country arrangements that result in the deportees being imprisoned in a foreign country, and other kinds of third-country arrangements, where, for example, Mexico has agreed to take in people who are not from Mexico and then, in some way or another, encourage those people to go back to their home countries,” Arulanantham stated. He notes that deportations to Mexico, where individuals are encouraged to return home, have occurred on a “massive, really unprecedented scale,” while the deportation-to-prison arrangements, though fewer in number – “probably less than a hundred, if you leave out the ones to El Salvador” – are particularly troubling.
The Cameroon case, detailed in a report by the New York Times, exemplifies the Administration’s approach. Individuals are deported to a country where they have no ties, and then effectively held in detention until they consent to return to their home countries. Arulanantham argues this constitutes “imprisonment without trial” and is “unquestionably illegal.”
Beyond the immediate issue of imprisonment, legal challenges center on the lack of due process afforded to those being deported. The core argument, as Arulanantham explains, is that individuals are not given a meaningful opportunity to challenge their deportation to a third country. The law, he says, dictates that a deportee should be able to *elect* the country to which they are deported, and if that isn’t possible due to risk of persecution, the government must explore other options – transit countries, previous places of residency – and provide the individual with notice and an opportunity to contest the removal.
This process was challenged in the case of Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., a class-action lawsuit arguing that the government’s practice of sending people to third countries without notice or opportunity to challenge the legality of the arrangement was unlawful. A lower court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, requiring the government to provide notice. However, the Supreme Court swiftly issued a stay of that order in , without offering a substantive explanation.
“They didn’t say that the lower court was wrong,” Arulanantham clarifies. “They just said that the government can keep doing third-country deportations while the case is pending.” He believes this stay directly enabled the subsequent months of third-country removals without any opportunity for legal challenge.
The Supreme Court’s decision to stay the lower court’s order raises questions about its long-term intentions. Arulanantham explains that the case will eventually return to the Supreme Court, but the timing is uncertain. “That can take months and months,” he says.
The legal framework surrounding deportation allows for the possibility of sending individuals to a third country if their requested country of deportation is unavailable and no other viable options exist. However, What we have is contingent on providing the deportee with notice and a chance to challenge the removal to that third country. The current Administration’s practice, as outlined by Arulanantham, appears to circumvent this requirement, raising serious concerns about its legality and ethical implications. The ongoing legal battles and the Supreme Court’s involvement suggest this issue will remain a significant point of contention in the coming months, with potentially far-reaching consequences for immigration policy and the rights of non-citizens in the United States.
The situation is further complicated by broader trends in migration policy, as evidenced by paused applications related to Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela, as tracked by the Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA). While the specifics of these pauses differ from the third-country deportation issue, they underscore a larger pattern of restrictive immigration measures under the current Administration.
