The U.S. government has ordered thousands of immigrants who seek asylum to be removed to “safe third countries” they have never been to, a practice that rights advocates say is upending asylum proceedings and leaving people stuck in long, uncertain delays. The Associated Press described asylum cases involving people facing deportation to places including Uganda, Honduras and Ecuador, even after they arrived in the U.S. seeking protection and had been waiting for rulings on their asylum claims.
The AP’s report said the policy shift has taken on a deterrent effect for many migrants. It described advocates’ view that fear of being deported to an unfamiliar country could push people to abandon their asylum cases or return home. In one such warning, Cassandra Charles, a senior staff attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, said, “This administration’s goal is to instill fear into people. That’s the primary thing,” according to the report.
The process depends on steps taken inside immigration courts. The AP said Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys, described as the de facto prosecutors in those courts, were first instructed last summer to file motions intended to terminate asylum claims and allow deportation. Lawyers and advocates said these efforts focus on sending people to another country rather than arguing that a person lacks a claim for protection.
The AP also tied the expansion of the practice to a legal precedent within the immigration court system. It said the government increased the use of ending asylum claims after a ruling from the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals, which sets legal precedent. The report said the Board’s decision cleared the way for asylum-seekers to be removed to third countries where the U.S. State Department determines they would not face persecution or torture.
In addition to the legal change, the AP report described how limited removals and international constraints have complicated implementation. It said DHS has released little information about the third-country agreements, known as Asylum Cooperative Agreements, and about how many people have actually been deported under those agreements. According to a tracker run by Refugees International and Human Rights First, fewer than 100 deportees are thought to have been sent.
The report also described a gap between the number of orders issued and the practical ability to move people. Mobile Pathways’ data, as described by the AP, showed thousands of orders for Honduras despite a diplomatic agreement allowing Honduras to take only 10 deportees per month for 24 months. The AP said dozens of people ordered to Honduras in recent months did not speak Spanish as their primary language, including people whose primary languages were English, Uzbek and French.
For Uganda, the AP report said the situation has been similar. It cited comments from a senior Ugandan official saying none have arrived, and it said Ugandan officials pointed to the difficulties and planning involved in carrying out flights with small numbers of people. The AP also said immigration lawyers suspect policy adjustments could extend to other forms of third-country deportations, while the earlier court cases continue to move forward.
The AP report further described specific court proceedings in which attorneys sought third-country destinations rather than returning people to their countries of origin. It said a woman who asked for asylum after surviving captivity and sexual assault arrived at the border with her young daughter and later learned she was pregnant with a second child conceived during a rape. The report said that in a San Francisco immigration courtroom in December, the ICE attorney told the judge she would go to one of three countries—Ecuador, Honduras or “across the globe to Uganda”—and that she had not heard of Ecuador or Uganda before the hearing. The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the AP she felt panic at the prospect of being sent to places she described as violent and dangerous.
In mid-March, the AP said, top ICE legal officials told field attorneys in the Department of Homeland Security to stop filing new motions for third-country deportations tied to asylum cases. The report said the email seen by the AP did not provide a reason, and that DHS did not respond to requests about whether the halt was permanent. The AP said the earlier cases seeking third-country removals were continuing while that potential shift was being discussed.
DHS, in a statement described by the AP, characterized the agreements as lawful bilateral arrangements intended to allow asylum seekers to pursue protection in partner countries that agree to fairly adjudicate claims. The report said DHS also pointed to the scale of backlogged asylum cases, adding that it was using lawful tools to address abuse and delays—while advocates argued that the policy changes were designed to pressure asylum seekers through fear and the uncertainty of removal to unfamiliar destinations.