Around 1,200 people are due to be deported from the United States to countries that are not their own, with the first group of roughly twenty expected to fly this week. Those being removed include African nationals and people from countries across North and South America and the Caribbean.

What third-country removal is

Ordinarily, deportation returns someone to the country of which they are a national. Third-country removal sends them somewhere else entirely — a state that has agreed to receive them, typically in exchange for something.

Governments turn to it when the country of origin will not cooperate. A state can simply decline to issue travel documents for its own nationals, and without documents an airline will not board them and the destination will not admit them. Some countries refuse as a matter of policy; others are unable to verify identity. The result is a category of people who have been ordered removed and cannot be removed, and third-country agreements are the workaround.

The legal constraint that applies

The principle limiting all of this is non-refoulement: a state may not return someone to a place where they face a real risk of persecution, torture or other serious harm. It applies regardless of immigration status and it applies to onward transfer — sending someone to a country that will then send them somewhere dangerous does not cure the problem.

That is why litigation over third-country removals turns on process rather than on the principle itself. The arguments concern whether individuals get a meaningful opportunity to raise fear of harm in the specific receiving country, how much notice they are given, and whether they have access to a lawyer before the flight leaves. Courts in several jurisdictions have intervened on precisely those grounds rather than on whether such removals are permissible in principle.

The arguments on each side

Supporters argue that a removal order that cannot be executed makes immigration law meaningless, that uncooperative origin states should not hold a veto over another country’s decisions, and that a receiving state which consents is exercising its own sovereignty.

Critics argue that people are being sent to countries where they have no language, family, legal status or means of support, which is a different thing from deportation as normally understood; that consent is often purchased through aid or diplomatic concessions, which raises questions about how freely it is given; and that monitoring what happens after arrival is difficult, so assurances about treatment are hard to verify.

Both arguments are about real problems. The unresolved question in the middle is what obligation, if any, a sending state retains once the plane has landed.

Why the numbers are worth watching

Twenty people on a first flight against a total of 1,200 tells you this is a programme being tested rather than executed at scale. Small initial groups are standard: they establish that the receiving state will actually admit people, that the paperwork holds, and that courts do not halt it.

What follows the first flight is therefore more informative than the flight itself. If the remaining 1,180 move in similar increments over months, this is a slow programme with individual review. If the pace jumps sharply, the review is not happening at the same rate — and that is where the legal challenges will land.

Sources

• NPR — reporting on planned third-country deportations, August 2026