Internal government documents obtained by Prime Post News show the Trump administration has expanded its campaign to persuade countries around the world to aid its crackdown on illegal immigration by accepting deportations of migrants who are not their own citizens.
The documents indicate Uganda in East Africa recently agreed to accept deportees from the U.S. who hail from other countries on the continent, as long as they don’t have criminal histories. It’s unclear how many deportees Uganda would ultimately accept under the arrangement with the U.S. government.
Honduras’ government has also agreed to receive deportees from other Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, including families traveling with children, the documents show. The government of Honduras agreed to a relatively small number of deportations — just several hundred over two years — but the documents indicate it could decide to accept more.
Both agreements are based on a “safe third country” provision of U.S. immigration law that allows officials to reroute asylum-seekers to countries that are not their own if the U.S. government makes a determination that those nations can fairly hear their claims for humanitarian protection.
The two bilateral deals outlined in the internal documents are part of a large-scale diplomatic effort that President Trump’s administration has staged to strike deportation arrangements with nations across several continents, including those with problematic human rights records. The administration has argued those agreements are key to its mass deportation campaign, since there are some migrants who can’t easily be deported to their home countries because of strained diplomatic relations or other reasons.
At least a dozen countries have already accepted or agreed to accept deportees from other nations since the second Trump administration took office, and U.S. officials have been aggressively courting other governments. Internal government documents show the Trump administration has also asked countries like Ecuador and Spain to receive these so-called third country deportees from the U.S.
Representatives for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests to comment on Prime Post News’ reporting.
A senior State Department official said, “We don’t comment on the content of private diplomatic negotiations, but the State Department is doing everything possible to support the President’s policy of keeping Americans safe by removing illegal aliens who have no right to be in the United States.”
remain relatively limited in scale, Meissner said a main driver behind the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts is a desire to send a message of deterrence to those in the U.S. illegally, one that highlights the possibility that they could be sent to distant countries where they have no ties.
“The broader reason beyond that is fear and intimidation and ultimately, incentivizing self deportation,” she said.
Reported by Peter
