Trump’s deportations to third countries violate human rights, UN experts warn

The Trump administration's practice of deporting migrants to countries where they have no ties has produced widespread human rights abuses, according to a group of United Nations-affiliated experts. Two dozen specialists who advise the UN Human Rights Council, together with a special rapporteur for the African Commission, said they had written to Washington and to 35 governments that have accepted deportees, urging an immediate end to the arrangements. Their joint statement described the harms as no longer theoretical, warning that people sent to unfamiliar nations face heightened risks of torture, mistreatment and enforced disappearance, with consequences that can be fatal for the most vulnerable, according to The Guardian.

Since Donald Trump returned to office in 2025, Washington has paid foreign governments, nearly a third of them African, to accept migrants including refugees and asylum seekers with no connection to those nations. Roughly 20,000 people have been bused into Mexico, according to Refugees International and Human Rights First, while more than 5,000 have been flown to Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and central Asia. Officials say the removals target criminals, but reporting compiled by a journalist consortium documented cases including an Iranian woman who had protested her government and a gay Ghanaian man outed and pursued by relatives. The experts also noted that many receiving countries are themselves in crisis and lack resources to protect new arrivals. Beatrice Njeri of the Global Strategic Litigation Council called the statement significant, citing two men sent to Equatorial Guinea who were bound, beaten and forced down a staircase.

Summarized by PolitiKool from The Guardian’s reporting. Read the full story at The Guardian →