\n That is short of the administration\u2019s goal of a million deportations a year, though Homeland Security officials argue that hundreds of thousands of others have voluntarily left the country.\n <\/p>\n
\n So, in an effort to circumvent some countries that declined to accept back their citizens, the administration devised a plan to enter into agreements with other countries to accept deportees<\/a> regardless of whether they were from those countries, or even spoke the language.\n <\/p>\n \n Yet even as around two dozen countries \u2014 spanning from Africa and Central Asia to Latin America \u2014 continued entering into agreements or memorandums of understanding to accept deportees from the US, that plan has accounted for only a tiny fraction of deportations.\n <\/p>\n \n The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, estimated<\/a> that 15,000 people have been deported to third countries \u201413,000 of whom were sent to Mexico\u2014between January and December 2025. The agreements for each country vary, with some offering more detail than others, including parameters on who will be accepted.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe Trump Administration is using all the tools in our toolbox to carry out the largest, lawful deportation operation of criminal illegal aliens in history,\u201d White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told CNN in a statement. The State Department similarly said in a statement that \u201cimplementing the Trump Administration\u2019s immigration policies is a top priority for the Department of State.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The only country that has accepted a significant number of deported migrants from other countries is Mexico, and that is through an arrangement that began during President Joe Biden\u2019s administration. Some countries entered agreements, but it is not publicly known whether they have accepted any migrants.\n <\/p>\n \n Miller appeared frustrated on the call and directed his ire to State Department officials, according to two US officials. Despite striking all these arrangements with far-flung countries to accept migrants from the United States, the removal of immigrants to those countries appeared to have stalled \u2014 or to have never actually begun.\n <\/p>\n \n His message to the officials was clear: If they couldn\u2019t get countries to move faster and accept more people, he would get involved.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cHe\u2019s at his wit\u2019s end about it,\u201d one of the US officials said.\n <\/p>\n \n A White House official told CNN there have been no internal complaints about the pace of the program but instead conversations about working with additional countries on third-country removal agreements, arguing that such arrangements have allowed the US to remove immigrants with criminal histories whose origin countries won\u2019t accept them.\n <\/p>\n \n The intense push behind lining up countries to accept deportees from the US is a critical part of the Trump administration\u2019s aggressive strategy to achieve the president\u2019s campaign promise of mass deportation.\n <\/p>\n \n The US has historically faced challenges in deporting certain nationalities back to their origin countries \u2014 either due to frosty diplomatic relations between the US and those countries, or the criminal histories of some of the citizens the US was asking those countries to take back.\n <\/p>\n \n The administration\u2019s push to deport migrants to third countries is meant to serve two purposes: bypassing the cooperation of countries that wouldn\u2019t work with the US, and serving as a deterrent for migrants thinking about entering the US illegally, lest they be sent to an unfamiliar country thousands of miles away from home.\n <\/p>\n \n About 13,000 non-Mexican nationals were sent by the US to Mexico during the first year of Trump\u2019s term, and likely a few thousand more already this year, according to data kept by Refugees International and Human Rights First.\n <\/p>\n \n This arrangement is an extension of a program that began under Biden\u2019s administration, which in 2022 announced it would expel the surging number of Venezuelan migrants who crossed the southern border at the time back to Mexico.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe informal agreement with Mexico continues, and that\u2019s where the vast majority of third-country nationals have actually been deported,\u201d said Yael Schacher, the Americas and Europe director of Refugees International.\n <\/p>\n \n Under the agreements, countries agree \u2014 often for money, political favor or both \u2014 to accept immigrants from the US who are not citizens of those countries. Many of the efforts to deport these third-country nationals have been met with legal challenges.\n <\/p>\n \n Aside from Mexico, other countries have accepted, at most, a few hundred deportees \u2014 such as El Salvador, Panama, Costa Rica and Uzbekistan, according to the tally from Refugees International and Human Rights First.\n <\/p>\n \n Countries like Eswatini, Guatemala and Equatorial Guinea have each accepted a handful to several dozen migrants, while fewer than 10 appear to have been sent to Rwanda, South Sudan and Kosovo.\n <\/p>\n \n More than 10 countries who seem to have arrangements or agreements are not publicly known to have accepted any deportees. That doesn\u2019t include the Democratic Republic of Congo, which announced its own agreement with the US just this month.\n <\/p>\n \n The State Department spokesperson declined to comment on diplomatic communications with other governments.\n <\/p>\n \n The agreements primarily come in two forms: through arrangements where people with final orders of removal are being deported to the third countries, and through Asylum Cooperative Agreements, where asylum seekers who have had their claims terminated in the United States are being sent to seek asylum in other countries.\n <\/p>\n \n Efforts by the Trump administration to deport migrants to unfamiliar countries began early in Trump\u2019s second term. In March 2025, the US \u2014 invoking a wartime authority under the 18th century Alien Enemies Act \u2014 began deporting hundreds<\/a> of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, where they were locked up in that country\u2019s notorious maximum security CECOT prison.\n <\/p>\n \n By the summer, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US was \u201cactively searching for other countries to take people from third countries.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe are working with other countries to say, \u2018We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries \u2014 will you do that as a favor to us?\u2019 And the further away from America, the better, so they can\u2019t come back across the border,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n Another high-profile attempt occurred last year when a group of migrants, initially bound for South Sudan, were detained by the US at a military base in Djibouti. The migrants, including some from Cuba, Vietnam and Laos, were held in a converted Conex shipping container. That prompted a lawsuit and eventually the case made it to the Supreme Court<\/a>, which allowed the US to resume deporting migrants to countries other than their homeland with minimal notice.\n <\/p>\n \n There was also the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia<\/a>, whom the Trump administration has repeatedly tried deporting to Africa<\/a> ever since the Salvadoran immigrant returned from his detention at the mega prison in El Salvador, where judges previously ruled he should not be deported.\n <\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/gettyimages-2230156472.jpg\")
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