Trump Looking for Other Countries to Help Him Defy Deportation Ban

Yahoo

02-04-2025

The Trump administration is currently in talks with several countries to find a new place to deport immigrants, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Officials are seeking countries willing to accept deportees whose native countries are slow to take them back. The countries currently in talks with U.S. immigration officials are reportedly Benin, Eswatini, Kosovo, Libya, Moldova, Mongolia, and Rwanda, the Journal reported Tuesday night.
Ricardo Zuniga, a former senior State Department and National Security Council official, told the Journal that most countries willing to go along with U.S. demands would likely be 'problematic.'
'But even they are asking, 'What's in it for us? Who's going to pay for it? How am I going to explain the political burden of accepting people on behalf of the United States?'' Zuniga said.
Talks are currently being spearheaded by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the architect behind Trump's inhumane plan for massive deportations and known for his emotionally volatile run-ins with the press.
'Friendly reminder: If you illegally invaded our country the only 'process' you are entitled to is deportation,' Miller wrote on X Tuesday, advocating for the Trump administration to suspend due process to expedite the removal of alleged members of gangs the administration deems as terrorist groups, as it did last month with the sudden removal of 261 alleged members of Tren de Aragua to El Salvador.
Deals with other countries may have been in the works for some time. U.S. conservatives began plotting to send deportees to Rwanda before Trump was even elected, copying a contentious plan from the U.K.'s conservative leadership to offload asylum seekers there. The U.K.'s Rwanda Plan, which has been in motion since 2022, has proved both inefficient and expensive, according to The Guardian.
Additionally, the U.S. government has previously raised concerns about human rights conditions in Rwanda, including reports of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrest and detainment, disappearances, and torture. The State Department reported similar conditions in Benin and Libya.
While these plans may have already been in the works, there may be a renewed sense of urgency after a judge's decision barring the Trump administration from deporting people to El Salvador without first giving them an opportunity to challenge their removal.
Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy issued a temporary restraining order requiring the government to provide written notice and an opportunity for detainees to apply for protection before deporting them to a third country.
The order was a clear rebuke of Trump's $6 million deal with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to accept deportees at the Latin American country's Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, a prison notorious for human rights abuses.
This wasn't the first time that a judge challenged El Salvador as a destination for deportees. In a filing late last month, Judge James Boasberg said that by sending the prisoners to CECOT, the Trump administration had likely violated the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, which states that 'it shall be the policy of the United States not to expel … any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.'
The government admitted Monday that it had wrongly deported one Salvadoran national to El Salvador as a result of an 'administrative error.' ICE was aware that a judge had previously ruled that the man could not be removed there for concerns that he'd be targeted by gang violence, but his name was mistakenly included as an alternate on a manifest for removal. A judge ruled that there would be no way to rescue the man from CECOT, as he was no longer in U.S. custody.