What international agreements govern where deported people are sent?
Executive summary
Several overlapping instruments — bilateral readmission or deportation agreements, “safe third‑country” pacts, and ad‑hoc third‑country transfer deals negotiated between states — govern where a country can send people it removes; those arrangements sit alongside international obligations under the Refugee Convention and the Convention Against Torture that try to limit removals to places where people would face persecution or torture [1] [2] [3]. In practice the United States negotiates bilateral deals and stopover arrangements to facilitate flights, while critics say secretive third‑country transfers and gaps in screening have produced chain refoulement and legal challenges [4] [5] [3].
1. How removal destinations are created: bilateral and ad‑hoc agreements
Most cross‑border removals are possible only when the sending state reaches an agreement — formal or informal — with the receiving state; the U.S. has struck a mix of memoranda and bilateral deals to use other countries as destinations or stopovers for deportation flights [4] [5]. Reporting shows Washington has approached dozens of countries, and some nations (for example Honduras, Uganda, Eswatini, South Sudan and others named in media and government reviews) have accepted deportation flights or signed pacts to receive non‑nationals from the United States [6] [7] [8] [5].
2. The “safe third‑country” label and its legal bite
A “safe third‑country” agreement is a specific legal instrument that can bar an asylum claim in the receiving state by presuming the third country can provide protection; only some partners — Guatemala and Honduras among them in recent U.S. practice — have signed agreements that purport to let deported people apply for protection there, while others accept returns without offering protection options [1] [2]. U.S. federal law recognizes a safe‑third‑country exception that, when properly negotiated and applied, can make someone ineligible for asylum in the United States if they could instead be removed under such an agreement [2].
3. International law constraints: refugee protections and non‑refoulement
International obligations under the Refugee Convention and the Convention Against Torture (CAT) — and the broader principle of non‑refoulement they encompass — constrain states from removing people to countries where they would likely face persecution, torture, or other serious harm; advocates and some judges have argued that multistage transfers to third countries can amount to unlawful chain refoulement when they expose people to onward return to danger [3] [2] [6]. United Nations human‑rights experts and NGOs have warned that sending asylum seekers to countries where they have no ties and where protections are thin risks violating these international commitments [3] [9].
4. The contested reality: secrecy, screening and legal fights
Human‑rights groups, litigants and some federal judges say many recent third‑country transfer agreements are secretive, leave inadequate screening for fear of persecution or torture, and have resulted in people being stranded, detained, or sent onward to the countries they originally fled — charges the government disputes as it defends the legality and necessity of sharing repatriation burdens [3] [2] [7]. Courts and advocacy organizations have mounted challenges to the practice, and federal judicial opinions have accused administrations of attempting an “end‑run” around international protections by routing removals through third countries [2] [3].
5. Practical limits and persistent uncertainties
Even where agreements exist, removal depend on diplomatic consent and operational logistics: the United States cannot unilaterally send deportations to another state without that state's agreement, and terms vary widely — some countries accept temporary transit, others promise processing and protection, and many deal terms remain undisclosed, leaving researchers and affected people uncertain about legal safeguards and outcomes [5] [7] [8]. Where reporting is silent, this account does not invent details about specific agreements’ texts or undisclosed quid pro quos, but available sources make clear that the mix of statutory safe‑third‑country rules, bilateral readmission pacts and ad‑hoc transfer arrangements, constrained by refugee and torture‑treatment rules, is the architecture that governs where deported people are sent [2] [4] [3].