Since January 2025, the Donald Trump administration in the United States has signed bilateral agreements with 27 governments to deport migrants to countries where they have no ties.
This process is known as third-country deportation, and it’s created a system that operates as migration deterrence. These agreements also transfer responsibility for managing migrant lives to the Global South.
In February 2025, the Trump administration sent two chartered planes carrying 200 people from countries like Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and China to San José, Costa Rica.
During our ongoing research that involved fieldwork in Costa Rica in 2025, we interviewed two families who were on board one of the planes. They had been shackled during the flight.
Alerted that the first deportation from the U.S. was to take place, Costa Rican journalists and human rights activists awaited the arrival at the airport. The Costa Rican agents closed the window blinds of the planes before removing the shackles.
Migrants given no information
As the migrants we interviewed told us — and as documented by Human Rights Watch — none of the people sent to Costa Rica spoke Spanish. They weren’t informed where the flights were headed or where they’d be taken upon arrival. No translators were present when the first plane landed, and only a few were available upon the arrival of the second flight.
U.S. authorities expelled the migrants without giving them the opportunity to apply for asylum. Although some third-country deportations had occurred prior to February 2025, they had typically been carried out on a much smaller scale.
The deportation of non‑citizens to Costa Rica set the stage for 27 bilateral agreements later signed by the Trump administration with governments across Latin America, Africa and Central Asia. What initially appeared to be an exceptional measure had, within a year, become a preferred approach to migration management.
‘Border spectacle’
In 2025, the U.S. deported approximately 675,000 people. Among them, around 15,000, or two per cent of the total, were sent to third countries.
Given the relatively low numbers involved, the objective is not the removal of large populations of unwanted migrants. Instead, these deportations function as what American migration scholar Nicholas De Genova terms “the border spectacle of migrant victimization.”
Such spectacles are designed to generate fear. They encourage some asylum-seekers already in the country to leave and aim to deter others from attempting to cross into the U.S. altogether.
The principle rationale for this border regime was made explicit by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in July 2025: “The further away, the better, so they can’t come back across the border.”
This statement wasn’t just rhetoric — it reflected U.S. policy.
Creating uncertainty about where migrants might be sent — whether Eswatini, South Sudan, Rwanda, Costa Rica or Cameroon — was central to the strategy. It served both to deter would-be migrants in their home countries and to pressure those already in the U.S. to pursue what the administration called “self-deportations.”
Why do Global South states sign on?
To push countries in the Global South to accept deportation agreements for non-nationals, the U.S. relies on four forms of pressure: direct payments, visa restrictions, tariff threats and conditions on foreign aid.
Ghana, for example, secured the lifting of consular restrictions in August 2025 after agreeing to co-operate on deportations.
When Costa Rica signed its third-country deportation agreement in March 2026, President Rodrigo Chaves stated that he was “helping the economically powerful brother of the North” in order to avoid American tariffs on Costa Rican free-trade zones.
Eswatini agreed to receive deportees in exchange for financial transfers and improvements in its bilateral relationship with the U.S. Rwanda, for its part, capitalized symbolically on the model by incorporating it into its regional diplomatic strategy.
Taking on costs
Yet these negotiations are deeply one-sided. While the countries in questions may achieve short‑term gains, they also take on additional, uncompensated costs.
As we learned through our interviews of migrants in Costa Rica, for example, 85 migrants of the approximated 200 received in February 2025 remained in the Central American country. That’s because they could not return to their countries of origin for fear of persecution, imprisonment or forced military recruitment.
Some later resumed their journey to the U.S. and successfully claimed asylum there. Others required access to medical care, work permits and other forms of assistance.
Beyond granting temporary residency permits with limited rights, Costa Rica lacks the resources to ensure the safety and security of these migrants and to adequately address their needs.
The Trump administration’s reduction in international humanitarian aid has further undermined Costa Rica’s refugee protection regime.
For migrants, this state of prolonged waiting marked by legal uncertainty has resulted in psychological distress. Several interviewees reported panic attacks, depression and insomnia.
Read more: How international aid cuts are eroding refugee protections in the Global South
Beyond the United States
This emerging border regime is not uniquely American. In March 2026, the European Parliament endorsed the so-called return hubs mechanism, which opens the door to offshoring asylum processing.
Italy, for example, has had migrant detention hubs in Albania for more than a year.
Canada has reconfirmed its own Safe Third Country Agreement with the U.S.
Read more: Tragedies, not accidents: Tougher Canadian and U.S. border policies will cost more lives
Canada also passed Bill C-2 and Bill C-12 in 2025, legislation that substantially restricts access to asylum. What’s more, it reduced its refugee resettlement targets by 30 per cent for the 2026–28 period.
This doesn’t constitute a replication of the U.S. model, but it does reflect a convergence. Different mechanisms are increasingly aligned in the same direction: the progressive erosion of the right to asylum.
Mobilization
It’s therefore important to ask whether some refugee claimants deported to the U.S. may subsequently face third‑country deportations to other states.
In March 2026, more than 30 human rights organizations issued a joint statement calling for an end to chain deportations to Costa Rica. It explicitly accused the Costa Rican state as being complicit in — and directly responsible for — American violations of its asylum law and its international obligations under the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, protests recently erupted against the anticipated deportation of 1,100 Afghans from the U.S. to the country.
UN human rights experts have also expressed alarm about the risk of torture, enforced disappearance or arbitrary deprivation of life in some third countries.
Across the globe, migration scholars, human rights organizations and allies must do more than voice concern — they need to co-ordinate, organize and actively resist this emerging border regime before it becomes entrenched.
