The US Now Sends Deportees to Countries They Have Never Lived In. Jamaica Just Signed Up, and the Supreme Court Is Letting It Continue.

The risks are legal and reputational, carried mostly by the receiving governments, with no operational escalation behind them.

Expect more transfers and more partner countries until the Supreme Court rules, most likely in the government's favour.

Confidence on mechanism: high. The deals, the payments that have been disclosed and the court record are documented in official statements and filings^3,9,6. Confidence on horizon: medium. The Supreme Court sets its own timetable for a decision after argument, and partner governments can pause or renegotiate with little notice, as Jamaica's suspension clause allows⁴.

Analyst assessment. Each call is scored once its date passes.

The five calls are separate events and do not sum to one.

• Jamaica's Ministry of National Security statements, as issued, for each arrival, the count of asylum or humanitarian applications and any suspension.
• The Supreme Court docket for Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., at each filing, for the argument date and the decision.
• State Department releases and its published non-binding agreements, as posted, for new partner countries and their terms.
• Reuters and Associated Press reporting from receiving capitals, daily, for new agreements and arrivals.
• Third Country Deportation Watch country pages, monthly, for transfer counts by country.

What moved is a growing number of signed arrangements and flights; what did not move is the overall scale, which stays small next to total deportations.

The operational record shows steady expansion of the network. Cameroon agreed through diplomatic notes in December 2025 and has received 46 people on five flights¹⁴. Uganda received its first flight, of 12 people, in April¹¹. Liberia agreed in August to take up to 1,200⁷, and Jamaica took its first group this week⁴.

The scale is small against the administration's own target. The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates about 15,000 third-country deportations in 2025, 13,000 of them to Mexico, against the 1 million annual deportations the administration has said it intends to achieve¹⁵. DHS data show more than 16,000 such deportations from January 2025 to August 2026, which Al Jazeera notes is likely an undercount⁵.

Transit, not resettlement. Most people sent to the paid third countries do not stay there. As of January 2026 the five governments paid directly had received about 300 people, 250 of them Venezuelans sent to El Salvador⁹. More than eighty percent of those sent to paid countries had already returned to their country of origin, or were in the process of doing so¹⁶. The Senate Democrats call the arrangements costly, wasteful and poorly monitored, with the United States paying more than $1 million per person in some cases^16,9. Jamaica's arrangement is explicitly a transit route, with onward travel expected within 14 days⁴.

Since mid-2025 the network has grown from a court-sanctioned exception into agreements on three continents, with Jamaica the newest.

United States

Marco Rubio

Secretary of State, United States

Has said that most people offered a third country choose to return home instead, and called that the most important function of the agreements¹⁹.

What to watch

• New agreements published by the State Department
• Any change to the terms offered to partner countries

Jamaica

Horace Chang

Minister of National Security and Peace, Jamaica

Confirmed the first group's processing and 90-day landing status, and said another group could arrive in about two weeks⁴. Has said Jamaica is not opening its borders to uncontrolled migration⁸.

What to watch

• Arrival counts against the cap of 25 every two weeks
• Asylum applications, where 10 or more suspend the arrangement

Ghana

John Dramani Mahama

President, Ghana

Said Ghana accepted West African deportees because West Africans do not need a visa to enter Ghana¹⁸.

What to watch

• Rulings in the deportees' suit against Ghana's government

US Senate Democrats

Jeanne Shaheen

Ranking Member, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Released the committee Democrats' report finding the deals costly and poorly monitored¹⁶.

What to watch

• Oversight requests to the State Department and DHS inspectors general

The money is real but mostly arrives as aid packages, Jamaica's deal has no disclosed payment, and the Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the merits.

• "Jamaica is being paid millions." No payment to Jamaica has been disclosed. The government says the United States covers the costs through the IOM⁴, and critics are still asking what Jamaica receives in return⁸.
• "The Supreme Court has approved the policy." The Court has paused lower-court rulings and let removals continue, without an opinion explaining why¹. It has not decided whether the DHS guidance is lawful; that comes after argument in December³.
• "Countries are selling access per head." Disclosed sums are mostly aid commitments, such as $124m for Liberian health services and $30m for UN refugee work in Cameroon^5,14. Liberia says its deal involves no quid pro quo⁷.
• "This week's lawsuit is about third-country removals." The suit filed on October 15 challenges fast-tracked immigration proceedings for unaccompanied children, not third-country deportations²⁰.

The deals turn aid and visa policy into tools of immigration enforcement, and they bind small governments to legal risks they do not control.

The arrangements link immigration enforcement to foreign aid and visas. Al Jazeera reports that Washington offered to extend certain visas for Liberians from 12 to 36 months alongside its health funding⁵, and that Cameroon's agreement sits beside $400m in planned health support⁵. A government weighing a request now has to price in aid, visas and its relationship with Washington together.

The receiving governments carry legal and political risk at home. Eswatini's government faces a court challenge from human rights lawyers⁶, deportees have sued Ghana's government¹⁰, and academics and commentators in Jamaica are pressing for the text of its agreement^4,8. Those disputes can outlast the US litigation.

The administration's own account points to deterrence rather than volume: Secretary Rubio says most people offered a third country choose to go home¹⁹, and MPI reads the policy as aimed at encouraging self-deportation¹⁵. If that is the purpose, the number of countries signed matters more than the number of people sent.

Direct exposure is narrow, concentrated in aid delivery, transport and legal services.

Few portfolios are directly exposed, but advisers working with recipient governments or aid programmes should review the terms now.

Ask whether any revenue, funding or reputation depends on the transfers, and what changes if the Supreme Court rules either way.

• Contracts. Does the company carry, house, screen or process people transferred to third countries, and under which agency's contract?
• Funding conditions. Is any US funding received in a recipient country linked to migration cooperation, and is that link disclosed?
• Legal exposure. Is the company named in, or a witness to, litigation over transfers in the United States or a recipient country?
• Scenario planning. What changes in revenue or operations if the Supreme Court upholds the DHS guidance, or sets it aside, by mid-2027?
• Reputation. How would the company respond to reporting that people it transferred were detained or sent on to a fourth country?

The network will keep growing until the Supreme Court decides, with modest numbers and rising legal risk for the countries that sign.

Confidence: medium. The agreements, disclosed payments and court record come from official statements, filings and agency reporting across 22 sources, with key facts corroborated by at least two outlets. The terms of most agreements remain unpublished, and DHS has not made public data on the total number of agreements or transfers²¹.

Primary assessment. The administration will continue to add partner countries and run transfers at least until the Supreme Court decides Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D. The numbers will stay small next to total deportations¹⁵, because the policy's main effect, by the administration's own account, is to persuade people to return home¹⁹.

Strongest alternative interpretation. The administration argues that it has undisputed authority to remove people to countries that agree to accept them²². On its account, the deals give it a lawful option when a home country will not take someone back. On this reading the payments buy cooperation that saves detention costs, and the Supreme Court's two stays signal how the merits will go.

Where we diverge from consensus. Coverage frames the deals as countries being paid per deportee. The disclosed money mostly comes as aid commitments, Jamaica's deal has no disclosed payment at all⁴, and Liberia denies a quid pro quo⁷. The pressure on partners is real, but it works through the wider relationship rather than a price per person.

• What would make this call wrong: a Supreme Court decision against the government, which would require notice and a chance to raise fear of torture before each transfer².
• Or: a partner government suspending its deal after domestic court rulings, as Jamaica's arrangement allows⁴.
• Or: Congress attaching conditions to the funds sent to partner governments, answering the lack of oversight the Senate Democrats' report criticises¹⁶.

Federal law treats removal to a country with no connection as a last resort, which is why the case turns on notice and the chance to raise fear of torture.

Under federal immigration law, a person ordered removed generally goes to the country they designate, usually their home country²¹. If that is not possible, they go to another country to which they have a connection²¹. The statute's final category, any country whose government will accept the person, applies only if removal to the earlier categories is impracticable, inadvisable or impossible¹.

The Boston court's final judgment declared that DHS must first seek removal to the countries designated in each removal order¹. It also found that the guidance failed to provide the notice and hearings required for claims under the Convention Against Torture¹. The First Circuit affirmed most of that ruling, and the Supreme Court will now hear the government's appeal^1,3.

Earlier agreements took a different form. In its first term the administration signed asylum cooperation agreements with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, aimed at asylum seekers at the border¹⁵. The current deals serve interior enforcement and range from transit arrangements, like Jamaica's, to incarceration, as in El Salvador¹⁵.

The Senate report's example of the cost is a Jamaican sent to Eswatini for more than $181,000, despite a US court's finding that he should be returned to his homeland. Weeks later he was flown 7,000 miles back to Jamaica, also at US expense, and the Jamaican government said it never objected to his return⁹. Human Rights Watch reports that people sent to Eswatini, Ghana and South Sudan were arbitrarily detained there¹³. Orville Etoria, a Jamaican held at Matsapha Correctional Complex, a maximum-security prison in Eswatini, described his first weeks there in a deposition¹³:

1. The Supreme Court's blessing of third-country removals. SCOTUSblog, October 6, 2026
2. Practice Alert: Third Country Deportations and D.V.D. v. DHS. National Immigration Litigation Alliance, March 17, 2026
3. Supreme Court allows Trump's 'third country' deportation policy. NBC News, September 29, 2026
4. Jamaica: 22 third country deportees arrive, government warns on legal liabilities. NY Carib News, October 16, 2026
5. Trump ramps up third-country US deportations despite global rights outcry. Al Jazeera, October 15, 2026
6. Eswatini received $5.1 million to accept US deportees, minister says. Reuters, November 18, 2025
7. Liberia agrees to accept up to 1,200 third-country deportees from US. Reuters, August 18, 2026
8. Deportee deal draws fire. The Gleaner
9. Democrats say Trump's foreign deportation deals cost taxpayers millions. Reuters, February 13, 2026
10. Ghana faces growing criticism over US deportee agreement. DW
11. Uganda receives first US deportation flight under third-country agreement. The Guardian, April 2, 2026
12. US in talks with Jamaica to send third-country migrants as rift widens. Associated Press, via WLRN, June 18, 2026
13. "To Scare People": US Expulsions of Third-Country Nationals to Countries in Africa. Human Rights Watch
14. Cameroon. Third Country Deportation Watch, September 10, 2026
15. U.S. Third-Country Deportation Agreements Are More About Fear than Numbers. Migration Policy Institute
16. Ranking Member Shaheen, Senators publish major new report on true cost of Trump Administration's third country deportation deals. US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, February 13, 2026
17. Rwanda reached deal with US to take in up to 250 migrants, government says. Reuters, August 4, 2025
18. Ghana agrees to accept West Africans deported from US, president says. Reuters, September 10, 2025
19. Secretary of State Marco Rubio Remarks to Press. US Department of State, September 1, 2026
20. Trump administration sued over accelerated immigration process for migrant kids. CNN, October 15, 2026
21. Immigration Removals to Third Countries. Congressional Research Service
22. DHS Releases Statement on Major Victory for Trump Administration and the American People on Deporting Criminal Illegal Aliens to Third Countries. US Department of Homeland Security, June 23, 2025