Hpw many deportees are being sent to countries other than their origin country
Executive summary
Available reporting shows the number of people the U.S. has removed to countries other than their own is measurable but limited: human-rights monitors and advocates report several thousand third‑country removals (Amnesty cited “more than 8,100” as of July) while official DHS public statements focus on total removals (over 527,000 deportations) without a comprehensive, regularly published breakdown of third‑country cases [1] [2]. Independent reporting and government documents confirm third‑country removals are a growing and deliberately expanded policy, but public tallies remain fragmented across news outlets, advocacy groups, and isolated government releases [3] immigration-1st-year" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">[4] [5].
1. What the numbers published so far actually say
Amnesty International reported that the U.S. government had deported “more than 8,100 people to countries that are not their home country” by July, with the majority of those third‑country removals going to Mexico (over 5,700), a figure Amnesty used to quantify the scope of the practice [1]. DHS has emphasized broad removal totals — a 2025 DHS press release cited more than 527,000 deportations and 1.6 million voluntary self‑deportations — but DHS public statements do not appear to provide a public, centralized count of third‑country removals comparable to Amnesty’s figure [2]. Major news outlets and trackers (Newsweek, PBS, Migration Policy Institute, New York Times) document specific flights and new partnerships — Eswatini, Uzbekistan, South Sudan, Ghana, Paraguay, Costa Rica, Panama and others — but they do not yet reconcile into a single authoritative total beyond civil‑society tallies and case lists [3] [6] [4] [7].
2. Why there’s no single, definitive tally
U.S. law constrains third‑country returns and requires procedural safeguards in many cases, but the practice can occur under different legal labels (formal removals, expulsions, transfers), which complicates accounting; advocacy researchers emphasize the difficulty of producing a conclusive list because some receiving countries accept returnees without formal “safe‑third‑country” agreements and because government reporting is uneven [8]. Migration Policy and other analysts note that informal arrangements, emergency transfers (e.g., to Guantánamo or temporary holding in Djibouti), and bilateral deals create opaque chains of custody that evade neat public statistics [4] [5]. Congressional correspondence and litigation records show piecemeal disclosures — e.g., letters noting several hundred detained people held in El Salvador or case injunctions blocking flights — but not a comprehensive monthly national count [9] [10].
3. How the numbers reported map to the broader deportation picture
Even accepting Amnesty’s 8,100+ figure, that cohort is a small share of the administration’s overall removals; DHS’s own headline number of roughly half a million formal deportations underscores scale but not destination detail [1] [2]. Journalistic investigations and government data indicate third‑country removals have expanded geographically — including to several African states and Latin American transit partners — and to populations that include people who previously sought protection from return to their home countries, raising legal and humanitarian alarms [3] [6] [8].
4. Conflicting narratives and competing agendas
Advocacy groups frame third‑country removals as a rapidly escalating human‑rights crisis and provide the most specific counts (Amnesty’s 8,100+), emphasizing secrecy and risk of torture [1]. The administration frames expanded removals as pragmatic solutions to repatriation obstacles and highlights large aggregate removal totals to show enforcement effectiveness [2] [5]. Independent outlets and policy shops (Newsweek, PBS, Migration Policy) document deals and geographic spread but caution that available public data are incomplete and sometimes contradictory [3] [6] [4].
5. Bottom line and limits of current reporting
Current public reporting supports a clear answer in range-form: thousands — not hundreds of thousands — of deportees have been sent to countries other than their origin, with Amnesty documenting “more than 8,100” such cases as of mid‑year and other sources corroborating numerous additional individual transfers and new receiving states, while DHS does not publish a single, up‑to‑date public figure isolating third‑country removals from total deportations [1] [3] [2]. The precise cumulative total cannot be independently verified from the available reporting because government datasets do not provide a consolidated third‑country removal line item and many transfers are described only in litigation filings, press releases, or NGO tallies [9] [8].