UN Experts Warn US Third-Country Deportation Deals Are Fueling a 'Cascade' of Human Rights Violations

A coalition of more than 20 independent United Nations experts issued a stark warning on Monday, cautioning that the Trump administration's escalating practice of deporting migrants to countries with which they have no personal or legal ties is producing a domino effect of serious human rights abuses. The panel, which includes the UN special rapporteurs on the rights of migrants and on protecting fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, said the policy is sharply increasing the likelihood of torture, ill-treatment, and enforced disappearance.

The experts did not speak on behalf of the United Nations itself but are mandated by the UN Human Rights Council to monitor and report on specific thematic issues. Their intervention marks one of the most pointed condemnations yet of a deportation strategy that has quietly expanded since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025, with Washington negotiating agreements with developing nations to absorb migrants it cannot legally send back to their countries of origin.

According to the experts, the United States has now secured such arrangements with more than 35 countries, a list that includes Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, and South Sudan. Each of these agreements, they caution, risks violating the customary international law principle of non-refoulement—the prohibition on returning refugees or asylum seekers to territories where they would face persecution or serious harm.

The scale of the operation is considerable. The experts estimate that at least 23,000 third-country nationals have been deported under these arrangements so far. That figure may understate the true extent of the program. An investigation published last week by the nonprofit group Forbidden Stories, in collaboration with an international consortium of journalists that includes FRANCE 24 reporters, found that more than 25,000 third-country nationals had already been deported by the end of August.

Central to the experts' concern is the fact that deportees are being sent to nations or territories where they have no family connections, no community support, and no cultural or linguistic ties. For many, this means being dispatched to places that bear no resemblance to their former lives—and, in some cases, to countries still grappling with armed conflict, internal displacement, and severe poverty. The experts noted that many of these third countries lack even the most basic asylum processing infrastructure or protective holding facilities, and are often devoid of adequate health and medical services or sustainable reintegration programs.

The panel emphasized that these conditions compound the trauma that many deportees originally fled. "Others are sent to places where they risk further violence or discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or human rights advocacy," the experts warned. The consequences can be particularly severe for children, women, persons with disabilities, victims of trafficking, LGBT individuals, human rights defenders, and stateless persons—groups the experts identified as being at the gravest risk. "For migrants in situations of particular vulnerability, the consequences can be deadly," they said.

The experts also raised alarms about the broader legal and moral implications of the arrangements. They noted that the deportations could lead to arbitrary detention, slavery, and trafficking in the receiving countries. Because many of these nations have no functioning asylum systems and are themselves engulfed in conflict—with their own populations facing displacement, starvation, and debilitating poverty—the experts argued that sending vulnerable people there constitutes a violation of the sending state's obligations under international law.

A key legal point made by the panel is that responsibility does not end at the point of deportation. "A state that knowingly aids or assists another state in conduct that violates non-refoulement or other human rights obligations may itself incur international responsibility," they cautioned. This principle of complicity means that the United States could be held accountable not only for its own actions but also for the foreseeable harms that deportees face after arrival in third countries.

The experts said they had formally notified the United States and all other governments party to these arrangements of their findings. They also revealed that they are in contact with UN agencies that assist refugees and migrants, including the International Organization for Migration (IOM), to stress that their engagement with such arrangements must not be seen as legitimizing them. This reflects a concern that international bodies could inadvertently lend credibility to a system that the experts believe is fundamentally at odds with human rights protections.

The panel's statement comes amid growing scrutiny of the Trump administration's migration policies, which have drawn criticism from human rights organizations, legal scholars, and some foreign governments. The deals with third countries have been portrayed by Washington as a pragmatic solution to managing migration, but critics argue they effectively outsource humanitarian responsibilities to nations that are often ill-equipped or unwilling to handle them. The experts' warning underscores a deeper tension: while states have the right to control their borders, that right is not absolute and must be exercised in accordance with international legal standards.

The investigation by Forbidden Stories and its partners has added granular detail to the picture, documenting individual cases of deportees sent to far-flung destinations. In one notable example, migrants were deported from the United States to Eswatini, a small landlocked country in southern Africa that they had never heard of and that has reportedly rejected some of them. Another report traced deportees to Cameroon, where they face uncertain fates in a country already dealing with its own internal crises.

The experts' assessment is that these arrangements represent not just a series of isolated incidents but a systemic problem. The "cascade" of rights abuses they describe—spanning torture, ill-treatment, enforced disappearance, slavery, and trafficking—suggests that the policy is creating a chain of harm that begins with the deportation decision and continues long after the plane lands. Because the deportations often involve people at various stages of their immigration proceedings, including asylum seekers, the experts argue that the measures undermine the very foundations of refugee protection.

The experts closed their warning with an urgent call to action: "All states and territories involved must immediately halt these arrangements." Whether that appeal will be heeded remains uncertain, but the statement places the issue squarely before the international community. As the number of deportations continues to rise, the panel's findings are likely to intensify debate over the legality and morality of a policy that, in the eyes of its critics, exports human suffering rather than resolving it.