The Trump administration has deported more than 25,000 people to countries other than their places of origin since January 2025, according to an investigation led by Forbidden Stories. The inquiry says many of those removed had legal protection against being returned to their home countries because of the risk of persecution.
The investigation, published on 21 September 2026, found that Washington had reached agreements with 35 receiving countries. Around 20,000 people were sent to Mexico. The remainder were dispersed among 27 countries in Latin America, Africa and the Pacific.
The arrangements were negotiated with limited public disclosure, the consortium said. It found that the administration had earmarked $410 million for direct payments to recipient countries or for UN agencies helping to arrange the returns. Of that sum, $81 million was intended for signatory governments, more than $178 million for the UN's International Organisation for Migration, and $123 million for UNHCR.
A network of 72 journalists from 26 outlets in 15 countries spent six months collecting more than a hundred eyewitness accounts, according to Forbidden Stories. The consortium included FRANCE 24, RFI and 24 other outlets.
The policy has relied on removal to so-called third countries, meaning countries where the deported person was not born and may have no previous connection. The investigation said most of those removed had spent decades living in the US. People arrived in unfamiliar countries without relatives, income or legal status, it found.
The State Department's Office of Remigration, created in May 2025 and headed by Christian Jove Ehrhardt, handled most negotiations and payments, according to the investigation. The full terms of the 35 agreements, the incentives offered to each government and the immigration status eventually given to deportees remain unclear.
Forbidden Stories said the US had used political and financial arrangements, private bargaining, and trade or tariff incentives in its discussions with African governments. Twelve of the agreements were with African countries. The consortium said 49 of Africa's 54 countries had been approached about taking third-country deportees.
In one documented case, Cameroon signed a memorandum of understanding with the US in December to receive deportees. A week later, it signed a five-year health assistance programme worth nearly $400 million. The available information does not set out the terms of the deportation memorandum or identify the relationship between the two agreements.
Palau, which has a population of under 18,000, agreed in December 2025 to accept up to 75 third-country nationals in exchange for $7.5 million, the investigation found. In Eswatini, 32 people have arrived since July 2025 under an agreement that could cover 160 people and is worth more than $5 million.
The investigation also documented individual cases caught up in the administration's wider deportation drive. Rabbiatu Kuyateh fled civil war in Sierra Leone in the 90s and had lived in the United States for more than 30 years. She was detained at a routine Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, appointment in Baltimore, Maryland, in early July 2025.
After four months in detention, Kuyateh learned that she would be deported to Ghana, more than 1,000 km from Sierra Leone. Her case illustrates the consequences of a policy that can remove people with protection from return to their home country while placing them elsewhere with uncertain legal standing.
Mario Guevara, a Salvadoran reporter, was detained while reporting on a protest against ICE in Atlanta, Georgia, on June 14, 2025. He was deported to El Salvador four months later. The investigation did not provide a full breakdown of the nationalities of people sent to third countries, nor the details of how removal decisions were made in individual cases.
The administration initially announced elements of its deportation policy more openly before becoming less transparent about the agreements over time, according to the investigation. It remains unknown whether Congress was formally notified of every agreement and allocation, or how responsibility for final decisions was divided between the Office of Remigration, ICE and other agencies.
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