The United States is building an unprecedented network of deportee dumping grounds, pursuing deals with around a third of the world’s nations to expel immigrants to places where they do not hold citizenship. Once exiled, these third-country nationals are sometimes detained, imprisoned, or in danger of being sent back to their country of origin — which they may have fled to escape violence, torture, or political persecution.

The nations that the Trump administration is collaborating with to accept these expelled immigrants are some of the worst human rights offenders on the planet, according to the U.S. government’s own reports.

More than 8,100 people have been expelled in this manner since January 20, and the U.S. has made arrangements to send people to at least 13 nations, so far, across the globe. Of them, 12 have been cited by the State Department for significant human rights abuses.

But the Trump administration has cast a much wider net for its third-country deportations. The U.S. has solicited 64 nations to participate in its growing global gulag for expelled immigrants. Fifty-eight of them — roughly 91 percent — were rebuked for human rights violations in the State Department’s most recent human rights reports.

America’s preferred third-country deportee dumping grounds also receive uniform low marks from outside human rights groups. Only four of the 13 countries that have agreed to accept people forcibly expelled from the U.S. — Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Panama — in 2025 were rated “free” by Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization that advocates for democracy and human rights and gets the bulk of its funding from the U.S. government. The rest of the countries – El Salvador, Eswatini, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, Mexico, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Uzbekistan — were rated “partly free” or “not free.”

“It is not surprising the governments that would agree to these sketchy third-country removal arrangements would be countries with serious pre-existing human rights issues,” said Anwen Hughes, the senior director of legal strategy for refugee programs at Human Rights First. “But it is shocking that the United States would seek to remove third-country nationals to these destinations.”

The most recent additions to America’s global gulag are among the least free countries on the planet. This month, the administration expelled five men — from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam, and Yemen — to the Southern African kingdom of Eswatini, an absolute monarchy with a dismal human rights record. The move closely followed the U.S. deportation of eight men to violence-plagued South Sudan, one of the most repressive nations in the world. South Sudan is Freedom House’s lowest rated nation, scoring 1/100. Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, scored 17/100, worse than perennial bad actors like Egypt and Ethiopia.

“The Trump administration cares nothing for human rights and wants these deportations to third countries to be punitive,” Yael Schacher, the director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, told The Intercept.

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could resume expelling immigrants to countries other than their own without any chance to object on the grounds that they might be tortured. The court’s decision has been a boon to the administration, which has been employing strong-arm tactics with dozens of smaller, weaker, and economically dependent nations to push them to accept expelled people. Trump cheered the court’s decision in a White House statement earlier this month.

“I say this unapologetically, we are actively searching for other countries to take people from third countries,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at an April 30 Cabinet meeting. “We are working with other countries to say, ‘We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries, and will you do that as a favor to us?’”

The Trump administration has sought or struck deals with or deported third-country nationals to Angola, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Libya, Kosovo, Malawi, Mauritania, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Palau, Panama, Peru, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, South Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Tanzania, The Gambia, Togo, Tonga, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Zambia, and Zimbabwe; these 58 were taken to task by the State Department last year for significant human rights abuses. Tuvalu and Santa Lucia were also cited in the report for having repressive laws on paper but were not found to enforce them in practice. Only four of the 64 total nations — Antigua and Barbuda, Cabo Verde, Costa Rica, and Saint Kitts and Nevis — received a clean bill of human rights health from the State Department.

With the green light from the Supreme Court, thousands of immigrants are in

© The Intercept