The Trump Administration Is Reportedly Spending Hundreds Of Millions To Deport People To Countries They Have Never To

The Trump administration's practice of deporting people to countries they are not from and have no connection to has been fueled by a series of deals carried out by the Office of Remigration, according to a new report.

The Washington Post detailed that the administration, as part of its immigration enforcement strategy, has cut deals with at least 31 countries for $410 million. About dozen countries will receive $81 million in payments from the U.S.

The deals mean a person can be deported to a country even if they are not a citizen. Most of the third-country deportation deals have been made with countries in South America and Africa.

Human Rights Watch and Refugees International has created a website - Third Country Deportation Watch - to trace agreements and where people are being sent.

"Forced third country transfers have separated parents from children, spouses from one another, and cut people off from their communities in the United States," the website states. "Many people transferred to third countries are left in limbo and precarity: lacking legal status, identity documents, or any way to provide for their most basic needs."

The website claims that the administration has deported 25,000 people to 28 countries under the program. Overall, the administration says that it has deported 985,000 people during Trump's second term.

The Washington Post noted that the policy has been used by the Trump administration to encourage people to return to their home countries, the threat being that if they are deported, they might go somewhere else.

"The policy is one of the Trump administration's most coercive tools to spread fear and deny protection to people who have been granted—or are seeking—safety in the United States," Third Country Deportation Watch states. "The agreements treat immigrants and refugees as bargaining chips, reflecting the Trump administration's transactional and corrupt approach to foreign policy."

According to the website, asylum agreements with other nations vary. The administration has agreements to incarcerate deportees in prisons in El Salvador, Eswatini, and South Sudan with the plan being that they will eventually be sent elsewhere.

In other cases, the third country has agreed to be a place of temporary transfer before the immigrant is sent to their home country. Countries with these agreements include Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Panama, and Sierra Leone. However, the website states that these agreements might also include detention.

The U.S. also has "Asylum Cooperative Agreements" with Belize, Cabo Verde, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Liberia, Paraguay, and Uganda. In those instances, people sent to those countries are supposed to still be able to pursue an asylum claim.