The Trump administration has deported more than 25,000 migrants to countries where they had no previous ties, while secretly offering hundreds of millions of dollars to foreign governments and international organisations to facilitate the transfers, a major international investigation has found.
The deportations were carried out under agreements with third countries, allowing the United States to send migrants to nations other than their countries of origin.
The investigation, known as The Deportation Project and coordinated by Forbidden Stories, found that the Trump administration had signed or reached arrangements with 35 countries to receive people deported from the US.
The Washington Post, one of the media organisations involved in the investigation, reported that the US had authorised or pledged at least $410m to support the deportation arrangements as of the end of June.
Internal US government records reviewed by the newspaper showed that at least $81m was earmarked as direct payments to 13 foreign governments.
A further $179m was pledged to the International Organization for Migration, while $124m was pledged to the UN Refugee Agency for projects connected to refugees and infrastructure in countries involved in the deportation arrangements.
The investigation found that the payments were used in some cases as incentives for governments to accept deportees from the US.
The arrangements have allowed Washington to send people to countries with which they had no previous connection. Early transfers included migrants from China, Russia, Iran and Afghanistan sent to Costa Rica, while migrants from Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and Jamaica were sent to Eswatini.
The investigation found that the US had deported more than 25,000 people to at least 28 third countries, although about 20,000 of them were sent to Mexico under an informal arrangement.
Other deportees were sent to countries in Africa and Latin America.
In one arrangement, the US pledged $7.5m to Equatorial Guinea to accept up to 250 third-country nationals. More than 50 people had been sent there by August, according to lawyers representing deportees.
The investigation also found that the US had pledged $5.1m to Eswatini under an agreement allowing the southern African country to receive up to 150 deportees. Nineteen migrants had been sent there under the arrangement.
The deals varied in their conditions. Uganda, for example, agreed to accept African nationals, while the Democratic Republic of Congo would not accept African nationals under its arrangement, according to US government records reviewed by The Washington Post.
Some deportees interviewed by journalists and lawyers alleged that they were held in poor conditions, beaten by guards, denied food or prevented from communicating with lawyers and relatives.
The investigation also found that the Trump administration created an Office of Remigration within the US State Department to negotiate and manage the agreements.
The office, which has about 15 employees, operates within the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, an agency traditionally focused on humanitarian assistance and refugee resettlement.
The Trump administration has defended the policy, saying third-country removals are used where migrants’ home countries will not accept them and in cases involving people with removal orders.
The investigation found that many of the deportees had no prior connection to the countries receiving them, raising questions about the treatment of migrants after their removal and the transparency of the agreements.
The findings form part of a six-month international investigation involving 24 media organisations across 15 countries into the Trump administration’s use of third-country deportations.
