Just yesterday, the Supreme Court of the U.S. allowed the Trump Administration to temporarily continue its practice of third-country deportations. Third-country deportations sends certain immigrants to “third countries” to which they have no connection.
Sarah Mehta of the ACLU’s Equality Division joins Tim to underscore the harms posed by this cruel and unlawful policy. They discuss the way that third-country deportations exacerbate Trump Administration’s campaigns of terror and coercion against immigrants, and the awful conditions of many of these third-countries.
Sarah Mehta is deputy director of policy and government affairs for the Equality Division at the ACLU. She has previously worked at the ACLU in various roles including as Senior Border Policy Counsel, Human Rights Researcher, Detention Attorney, and Aryeh Neier fellow.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Tim Dickinson
This is Tim Dickinson for The Contrarian. Our guest today is Sarah Mehta, who is a Deputy Director of the ACLU and an expert on immigration. Sarah, welcome.
Sarah Mehta
Thank you so much for having me, Tim.
Tim Dickinson
We’re talking about a heavy topic today. We’re talking about third country removals by the Trump administration. I think before we dive into some of the horrors, could you just explain to us a bit about who this vulnerable population of folks is who are subjected to this policy?
Sarah Mehta
Yes, so, so far, the administration has deported between 23,000 to 25,000 people through what we call third country removals, which is where someone is deported not to the country they’re from, but to a completely different country, possibly a completely different continent. And, some of the ones that have got media attention most recently are people that are being sent to countries like Equatorial Guinea and Rwanda, and are often people who are functionally refugees. That means that they’ve already won protection in a U.S. court based on a fear of persecution or torture. That unfortunately doesn’t lead to lasting protection, which is why you see these individuals now in a vulnerable situation. But so a lot of the people that are being deported now are people who, you know, did actually win their pretty strong cases for protection in U.S. court, but are nevertheless being deported because that protection only prevents their deportation to the country that they’re from.
Tim Dickinson
I see. So, just to sort of… from the broadest point of view, these are people who are… come to the United States, are seeking protection, seeking a better life here because they’re fleeing some sort of persecution or other terrible circumstance, and they can’t be sent back to their home country, so the administration has decided to ship them to what kinds of places?
Sarah Mehta
Yeah, so I’d say, first of all, the largest number of people are still going to Mexico. And interestingly, we don’t have a public agreement with Mexico, so we don’t know what Mexico has agreed to or what the terms could possibly be. But that’s probably like 19,000 people. And primarily it’s been people from other Latin American countries that are being deported to Mexico. You might remember in just the first few days of the Trump administration, people who are arriving at the border trying to get protection. And, you know, Iranians fleeing the regime for various reasons, for example, were all sent to Panama, several hundred people in that first flight. So that’s sort of one of the situations. But now what we’re seeing is there are at least 35 agreements that we’re aware of with different countries around the world. There’s been a spurt of agreements with different countries in Central and Western Africa, and the people that are being sent there are going to countries like Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda, and Central African Republic. And one thing that’s interesting, which I’m sure we’ll get into, is, you know, some of these countries are… countries on the outside don’t seem like a country that would raise a concern, like Ghana, for example, which is a democracy. Although, as I’m sure we’ll talk about, people who are being sent there are actually then being sent back to the very countries that they fled originally. And then there’s other countries, like Central African Republic, which is one of the longest-running conflict zones in the world, or Equatorial Guinea, which is ruled by a regime that’s pretty well known for police brutality, extrajudicial killings, and torture.
Tim Dickinson
So how is this supposed to work? They’re being sent to these countries under some sort of wink and a nod or explicit agreement that these folks will not be sent back to their country of origin and will be treated well?
Sarah Mehta
So it’s an interesting question, and I’d say, first of all, this is not something that happened under previous administrations. You know, it was very rare for someone to be sent to a third country, and it was usually a circumstance, you know, that was pretty narrow and individualized to that one person. What’s happening now is over the last year and a half, the administration has been creating these agreements with countries. And, you know, as I said, some of them we’ve seen, some of them we haven’t. And some of them, I think, even when we’ve seen them, we haven’t seen all of the agreement. In the last year or so, the administration has been adding more language to those agreements, to what are called the dip notes, the diplomatic notes, where it will say this country agrees that they will not subject anyone they receive to torture or will not conduct themselves in violation of international human rights law, mainly Convention Against Torture, Convention on the Status of Refugees. And will not subject them to torture or persecution any place they send them on to, which is pretty telling. But again, it’s pretty much rote language. I mean, I think of it from… to a large extent, as checking boxes, and certainly some of these countries, the U.S. government has its own State Department reports on the horrors that people will face there, so it’s not like the country isn’t aware of what people are being sent to. And certainly at this point, there’s also enough evidence that people have been sent on to countries where they’re going to be deported that the administration certainly knows that. But I guess the last thing else to say on this quickly is we actually don’t know what’s in a lot of these agreements because I think a lot of it is being done over phone. Some of it has been hashed out in meetings where different Trump administration officials are visiting those countries in person or bringing people to the United States. And I think that’s probably where a lot of this is actually being hashed out. It’s not in the sort of rote paperwork that we eventually see.
Tim Dickinson
And part of the process of deporting people there is itself cruel and torturous. You have these, people are shackled for these flights. Can you talk just a bit… I mean, it’s not like the U.S. is upholding human rights in a great way before sending them off to these terrible countries that also are not upholding civil human rights.
Sarah Mehta
No, indeed, the flight is part of the trauma, and, you know, I think we think of the flights in many ways as at least short-term enforced disappearances, because people are often not finding out until they’re on the plane where they’re going. For people who then find out, oh, you’re not going to your country of origin, or you’re not going to the country you thought you might go to, but someplace else. People are panicking and that has been one of the justifications for the government. Using what’s called WRAP, which is a full body restraint device that people are… it looks like you’re, like, mummified, except that your face is free. And people can be held in that for a really long time. I mean, for the third country removal flights, we’re often talking about 24 hours or so. But sometimes people are also being sent to other countries, you know, where it takes even 50 hours, and people are not able to go to the bathroom, they’re not able to move, like, they’re soiling themselves, or, you know, having difficulty breathing. On top of which, you know, people have said that when they are afraid to get off the plane, they have been beaten, you know, they have, again, as you mentioned, been shackled. They’re in, sort of, sensory deprivation, not knowing where they’re going. We don’t think that there are necessarily nurses on the flight. So it’s a pretty terrifying situation for people that are suddenly being plucked from one place and then sent, you know, 24 hours to the next location without having any idea what’s happening to them.
Tim Dickinson
And so break down, you know, if you end up in Equatorial Guinea or you end up in Central African Republic, what are the conditions there? What is the danger there for these people who are seeking refuge?
Sarah Mehta
So most people are functionally under some form of custodial arrangement. In some countries like Rwanda, or excuse me, Eswatini and South Sudan, people are actually in detention. In Eswatini, they’re in a maximum security prison. In other countries, they’re basically under house arrest. People in Liberia and Equatorial Guinea are in basically hotels, but surrounded by armed guards. And being threatened, if they try to leave, they will be shot. Some of them have been beaten when they try to leave.
Tim Dickinson
And they don’t have like independent legal status in these countries.
Sarah Mehta
No, indeed. So that’s the issue. Every country’s slightly different, and some of them have said, look, we’ll give them visas, but they’ll be short-term. Some of them, they’re not giving them anything, and it’s a real issue for people who then… they both can’t regularize their status. In a lot of these countries, there is no functioning asylum or refugee system, so they couldn’t apply for it Anyway, and of course, in some of those countries, they’re just not safe. But the other thing is, yeah, people don’t have a way of getting into the regularized immigration system there, the way that many of them didn’t have in the U.S. either, but some people who I’ve spoken to, or whose, whose lawyers I’ve spoken to are stateless, so they both cannot leave the country, they cannot regularize their status, they’re basically in a permanent state of limbo there.
Tim Dickinson
Oh, and then there’s this issue of refoulment, which is a legal term of art. Can you explain to us what that means?
Sarah Mehta
Yeah, so under our international and domestic law, you’re not allowed to send someone back to a place where there’s reason to believe that they would be persecuted or tortured. This is a legal concept that’s embedded in U.S. domestic law, but also in the Convention Against Torture and the Refugee Convention, and it came from the end of World War II, when the U.S. and other countries realized that we were, to some extent, complicit in sending people back. to places where they would be killed, certainly by the Nazis. So under this, you were not supposed to send people back to a place where you know that they could be subject to those types of harms, either based on their past experience or because of what you know about them and the place they’re being sent to. The government is attempting to sort of whitewash its legal harms here by sending people to countries that are then sending them back to the countries they have protection from. So, for example, as mentioned, there are people who are going to Ghana who have protection from a country like Togo or Nigeria, for example. And when they get to Ghana, Ghana is not keeping them in Ghana. They are sending them back to the countries that they are from. So those people are part of what we call chain refoulement, where they are being sent, they’re basically being refiled, and the US has pretty good reason to know that that’s happening at that moment, even though these countries are saying, no, we’re gonna we’re gonna respect our international obligations. It’s just not happening.
Tim Dickinson
It’s a little like money laundering, but with people, like…
Sarah Mehta
Exactly, yes.
Tim Dickinson
And we’re also talking about, you know, people who may be part of the LGBT community who are getting sent to countries that are where that is illegal. Talk a bit about that, the sort of specific, you know, harm there.
Sarah Mehta
Yeah, so a lot of the African nationals that are being sent to Central and West Africa are people who won protection in the US because they are LGBTQ and they’ve faced persecution or violence in their countries of origin on that account. In a lot of the countries they’re being sent to, that status is either legally, well, criminalized, or they are in situations where there’s been significant amount of harassment and harm. So Ghana, for example, just passed one of the most restrictive laws in the world for gay people. In Uganda, I mean, it is a criminal penalty. It’s one of the most serious criminal penalties to be found to be LGBTQ. And those are countries that we are sending people, including people who are LGBTQ. One of the things that has come up recently, and this was just before the First Circuit, is, you know, people, because people aren’t getting notice of where they’re being sent, they have no opportunity to raise this claim or say, like, hold on, you can’t send me to a country where I’m going to send the exact, I’m going to experience the exact same thing. Of course, a lot of people don’t know very much about that country. I mean, people might not know very much about CAR, Central African Republic. public, where you might not face a criminal penalty, but where being gay can be a death sentence for many people.
Tim Dickinson
Right, right. You’ve written about the, sort of, propaganda value of all of this. regime for the Trump administration, right? That the people, become so fearful that this could happen to them that I guess they self-deport. Talk to us a bit about what the terror aspect of this, creates for existing populations of immigrants in the United States.
Sarah Mehta
I think the administration is using third country deportations just like it’s using detention. It’s to terrify people into giving up their rights. And even though they’re being very secretive about their operations, particularly with third country removals, within facilities, and to some extent in, like, Spanish media press, they’re being very open about the dangers that you might face if you don’t self-deport, accept deportation, get out of the country. It is a pretty horrifying threat, for people to be told, you have to give up your claims, and again, some of these people can’t just go back to where they’re from, they have a protection claim because they’ve been tortured there in the past. But people are being told if you don’t, you might end up stateless and subject to even worse danger in the country that you’re from. And I’ve heard, you know, from a lot of people who talk to administration officials more directly that it’s both the goal of scaring people into giving up their rights and abandoning their claims, and also the goal of undermining asylum more generally. And that’s really what the administration is trying to do, is to get people to give up and go back to their country of origin so that they can turn around and say, “So you weren’t really afraid to go to Haiti anyway, were you?” It really is part of this plot to get rid of humanitarian protection in all of its forms. And again, you know, from her perspective, it’s… I mean, it’s so horrible and callous and cruel, but it’s also… people in the general public aren’t necessarily hearing about this or being afraid of this. It’s the people that are in detention that are really vulnerable to it, who are being targeted for this type of messaging.
Tim Dickinson
And I’ve read about, you know, people in detention in El Paso, for example, who are not Mexican, but just sort of get driven to the border with Mexico and say, well, just, you know, cross over to that bus and this will all go away, right? And they’re being held in terrible conditions in El Paso to begin with. So there’s a coercion aspect to all of this that seems very dark.
Sarah Mehta
Yeah, there absolutely is. And I think, you know, with some of our clients in the case about Fort Bliss and El Paso, which you might be referencing, where people who said, you know, that they were basically being tortured and told, you know, we’re going to beat you unless you just agree to go back to Mexico. If you keep challenging your claim, if you keep saying, I won’t just go, you’re going to be subject to even worse conditions. So people are feeling like they’re really caught in a really difficult situation, where maybe then that is the best-case scenario, is to leave an awful detention facility to go to Mexico. What’s really odd, and horrific about the deportations to places like Equatorial Guinea and CAR is that, again, we’re talking about asylum seekers. We’re talking about, for example, an Afghan man whose family helped the United States in Afghanistan, who helped the military. And then was attacked in retribution by the Taliban, came to get protection in the United States, won protection, but is being deported. We’re talking about pro-democracy activists from Iran who are being sent to those places. So it’s… You know, it’s not even a question of like crossing the border into Mexico, which frankly is not a very safe proposition for a lot of people either, particularly at the northern Mexican border. But we’re talking about people who are not even getting a choice. They don’t have an opportunity to say, well, that place is too dangerous. Could I possibly go someplace else? Like it’s happening very quickly. But the coercion is definitely part of it. And I’ll also say what is notable, we don’t get a lot of information about what happens to people once they’re stuck. in those third countries. You might have seen some of the reporting that was done over the last couple weeks, particularly in the Washington Post and the Guardian, where guards were saying to people, like, basically, you have to go back to your country, or you’re going to be imprisoned here, or you could even be shot. In some countries, a lot of people have ended up leaving, and it’s hard to believe they did so voluntarily. You know, it’s hard to believe that the Somalis who were sent to Rwanda chose to go back to Somalia completely voluntarily. It’s just the huge amount of coercion and pressure that they’re under on all sides, and sometimes the harmful known is better than the harmful unknown, but none of this is, like, a voluntary choice or making anybody safe.
Tim Dickinson
Right, and this indefinite detention is sort of extrajudicial, right? These aren’t people who have been guilty of a crime, they’re just seeking refuge.
Sarah Mehta
Yeah, exactly. The Eswatini situation, for example, some of those individuals, I think most of the people who were detained in Eswatini had some type of criminal conviction in the United States, but they served time for it. They’re not being charged with a crime in Eswatini. And similarly, the people that are in Equatorial Guinea, in CAR, in Liberia, under house arrest, like, those are not generally people that have any criminal convictions, and they’re not being held there because of, you know, an allegation. It could be, to some extent, an extension of civil detention, as we see in the United States. But, yeah, there’s no way for them to get out of that detention then, you know? They’re not paying for a crime, there’s no end date in sight, and there’s no way, again, for them to regularize their status and find some way to get to liberty.
Tim Dickinson
Oof. There is a little bit of good news in terms of the First Circuit decision. Can you talk about where this stands legally now, and what due process rights were put into new focus with that decision?
Sarah Mehta
Yeah, so last week, the First Circuit ruled that the administration’s policy of third country removals, but very particularly the practice of deporting people without any notice and any opportunity to contest it, was unlawful. That policy was being effectuated through a set of guidance where the administration basically said, if we have diplomatic assurances from a country, you don’t get any notice, you don’t need any more. If we don’t have diplomatic assurances, you get a few hours, and that’s basically it. And the government… the First Circuit said that that guidance violated the Administrative Procedures Act, and also raised real questions about these diplomatic assurances. Even after that decision, was issued, the government’s position was that it was not yet in effect, so it tried to deport dozens of more people to Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, Burundi. Luckily, the First Circuit clarified that no, its order was now in effect. A previous earlier stay from over a year ago had been lifted. The government then however, has filed for, a stay with the Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court. The response from the plaintiffs is due today, so we’ll have to wait and see what the Supreme Court says. It’s a really important victory that has at least stopped flights for now. Some people are still being deported to third countries, it’s notable. People who do not have final orders of removal, not to get too technical, but there are different ways that you can get ordered deported, and if you’re ordered deported at the border or by an immigration agent, that’s not considered a final order of removal for these purposes. You can still be sent to third countries, and that happened over the weekend. But for now, this is, like, an important victory, and hopefully the Supreme Court will not issue a stay. The government made a lot of, I thought, pretty absurd arguments that this was very difficult for them to not be able to continue with their deportations because of all the inconvenience of rescheduling flights, etc. But, you know, hopefully we’ll get a good decision on this, and hopefully we’ll also get a good decision on our case that’s being argued tomorrow about the Alien Enemies Act, which is about whether the government can be held in contempt for defying court orders and illegally sending people to a third country last year.
Tim Dickinson
I found it fairly rich that the Administration was complaining that the First Circuit had ruled in the dark of night, somehow, that their dark of night deportations were somehow, you know, violating administrative procedure. Do you want to talk a bit about the case that you just mentioned, the Alien Enemies case?
Sarah Mehta
Sure, I think of this as almost the original sin case in many ways, as I’m sure people will remember last March, March 2025, the government secretly boarded a few flights with hundreds of people, Venezuelans and Salvadoran men and a few women, to send them to the infamous prison in El Salvador, CICOT. And the ACLU filed an emergency motion. We had a hearing before Judge Boasberg that evening. The government represented to the judge that it had no plans at that point, that there was no imminent deportation of these individuals under the Alien Enemies Act, that it wasn’t aware of that at all. In fact, during the hearing, two of the planes took off. The judge then issued an order that those flights needed to be turned around if they had already taken off, and otherwise they weren’t allowed to leave. The government disobeyed that order, and, you know, the next morning, the government reposted a video from the president of El Salvador with the sort of infamous oopsie, while showing hundreds of men being dragged quite brutally into a prison where many of our clients were tortured. We had an argument on Friday about what due processes do for those men, where the government said. Yes, they had due process rights in the US. Yes, they didn’t get due process. Yes, they were thus illegally deported. But no, now they’re not in the country anymore, so they don’t get anything. That’s the end of the story from the government’s perspective. Tomorrow’s argument before the full DC Circuit en banc panel is whether Judge Boasberg can go forward with his point that we have to hold the government accountable, and whether it can hold government officials in contempt for violating court orders. deliberately define what the court said at that time, which is you can’t deport these men.
Tim Dickinson
Well, thank you so much. Are there other, I mean, there’s so much to cover here, but are there other key points that you wanna make sure our listeners and our viewers come away with?
Sarah Mehta
I just want to remind everyone also that, you know, this is only one part of this really tragic story. Obviously, we are still deporting people to other places where they’re in danger all the time. There was a really important report that just came out from Human Rights Watch about the dangers that people sent to Haiti face, you know, one of the most dangerous places in the world with basically no functioning healthcare and where people are really being targeted, particularly people that have been deported from the United States. So that’s something to still watch. And with this third country removal policy, again, like. This is not a, you know, the numbers are not as alarming as you might think compared to other types of deportations we’re doing. But again, the point is really to create a very cruel system, and one that, unfortunately, if the U.S. is successful, other countries will absolutely replicate. We can already see in Europe, you know, suggestions of doing similar types of operations. And really, what we’re doing is basically almost trafficking in the most vulnerable people. Disappearing them at a time when we’re also disappearing court hearings, disappearing people in detention, putting people in real harm’s way.
Tim Dickinson
Real “shining city on the hill” stuff.
Sarah Mehta
Exactly.
Tim Dickinson
Well, Sarah, thank you so much for your time. Hope to have you back here explaining new horrors sometime in the future. Thank you so much.
Sarah Mehta
Always. Thank you so much, Tim. Appreciate it.