Third countries | Evictions cost the US Treasury millions

The Trump administration spent more than $40 million in 2025 to deport a few hundred migrants in at least 20 third countries, a tactic denounced as costly and aimed at sowing fear by Senate Democrats in a report on the president’s mass deportation campaign.

The analysis written by the Democrats of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee accuses the administration of having concluded opaque financial agreements with foreign governments in order to generalize the return to third countries (countries from which the deportees do not originate), a formerly exceptional measure. Some of these countries have a heavy record of corruption and human rights.

Its authors criticize the State Department for insufficient monitoring to ensure that payments made to these countries are not diverted and that deported migrants are not victims of mistreatment.

The administration “has expanded and institutionalized a system where the United States pressures or coerces countries to accept migrants who are not its citizens, often through costly, ineffective, and poorly monitored agreements,” wrote Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen in a letter sent Friday to her colleagues.

Administration officials say they have no choice, as some deported undocumented immigrants come from countries that refuse to take them back. In most cases, these migrants have criminal records, authorities say, although for some there is no record of U.S. convictions in public records.

The report, which paints the most comprehensive picture of the federal third-country removals program, documents the sending of migrants to at least 20 third countries. The analysis focuses on five countries – El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, Eswatini and Palau – to which the Trump administration has committed to paying a total of 32 million, explains a member of the committee, who agreed to discuss the analysis before its publication on the condition of not being named.

These agreements allowed American authorities to send around 250 Venezuelan migrants to a high-security prison in El Salvador, 29 to Equatorial Guinea, 15 to Eswatini, 7 to Rwanda, but none to Palau, according to the report, which puts the cost of deportation flights to ten third countries at more than 7 million.

“Millions of dollars in public funds are being spent without any real monitoring or accountability,” writes Senator Jeanne Shaheen in her letter. “Speed ​​and deterrence are prioritized over natural justice (due process) and respect for human rights. »

A great success, according to the administration

But State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said the report shows the administration’s “unprecedented” work over the past year to enforce immigration laws.

“It’s unheard of, some in Congress want to return to the days, just 14 months ago, when cartels could poison Americans at will and our border was open,” says Mr. Pigott, adding that “President Trump ended the Biden era of mass illegal immigration, for the greater safety of all of us.”

The third country strategy has caused a backlash in public opinion and given rise to legal challenges slowing down the administration’s action. In some cases, she had to change course.

In the spring of 2025, Donald Trump invoked theAlien Enemies Acta rarely used law targeting enemy combatants that the administration has interpreted as justifying the expulsion of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador. Many have been accused by the administration of being members of the transnational gang Tren de Aragua, an assertion often rejected by their families and lawyers.

These men were then transferred from El Salvador to Venezuela under a prisoner exchange. On Thursday, a federal judge in Washington ruled that the administration must return some of the Venezuelan deportees to the United States because they are challenging their deportation in court.

The Democrats’ analysis, which spanned eight months, drew on testimony from foreign and U.S. government officials and lawyers representing deportees or immigrant rights organizations, a committee staffer said.

According to the latter, the aim of the report was to reveal the costs of the administration’s approach.

Democrats fear that the administration will increase agreements with other third countries and accelerate the pace of expulsions, he adds.

The report criticizes the Trump administration for pursuing its deportation policies at the expense of other U.S. interests, including promoting human rights and punishing corrupt foreign regimes.

According to the authors, the $7.5 million paid by the Trump administration to Equatorial Guinea to accept immigrants exceeds all the aid provided by the United States to that country in the previous eight years. They cite a 2025 State Department report on human trafficking that cited “corruption and official complicity in trafficking-related crimes” in this country.

This report also indicates that the Trump administration was hastily deporting some undocumented immigrants to third countries, without asking their country of origin to take them back. In one case, a man deported to Eswatini was taken back by his home country of Jamaica, where officials said they never told the United States it was refusing to welcome him.

“As a result, the Trump administration sometimes paid for migrants’ travel twice: once to expel them to a third country, a second time to send them back to their country of origin,” the report said.

This article was published in the Washington Post.

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