HOUSTON (AP) — Efforts by U.S. immigration officials to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Uganda, a country to which the Salvadoran national has no ties, has again focused attention on efforts by the Trump administration to send people to countries other than their own.
The administration's agreements with so-called third countries have been contested in court by advocacy groups, who have argued that due process rights are being violated and that immigrants are being sent to countries with long histories of human rights violations.
But in June, a divided Supreme Court allowed the administration to allow the swift removal of immigrants to countries other than their homelands and with minimal notice.
Here’s what to know about these third-country agreements.
The agreements are part of a sweeping immigration crackdown by the administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally.
Federal law allows immigrants to be sent to countries where they are not from, with immigration authorities having occasionally done this in the past, according to immigrant and civil rights groups. But these kinds of deportations have greatly increased under the Republican administration.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a March memo that as part of such third-country deportations, it will deport immigrants only after getting diplomatic assurances that they will not be persecuted or tortured, as guaranteed under international law.
If the U.S. hasn’t received those assurances, immigration officials can still send the person there but first has tell them where they're going in a language they understand. Time between notice and deportation is generally 24 hours, but can be as little as six hours.
Trump officials have said these immigrants often come from countries that often do not take back all their deported citizens. They have called these immigrants “true national security threats,” claiming they have been convicted of such violent crimes as rape, murder and armed robbery.
The Trump administration has reached agreements with multiple countries, many in Latin America and Africa, to take in immigrants.
The U.S. has sent hundreds of Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Abrego Garcia’s case became a flash point in Trump’s immigration crackdown after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador in March.
Venezuelans and immigrants from Afghanistan, Russia, Iran, China and other countries have also been sent to Costa Rica and Panama.
Earlier this month, Paraguay signed a third-country agreement with the Trump administration.
Mexico has not signed such an agreement, but has accepted deportees from Central America and other Western hemisphere countries, including Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela.
In July, South Sudan accepted eight deportees from the U.S.
South Sudan, one of the world's poorest countries, has endured repeated waves of violence since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011.
Last week, Uganda, a landlocked country in East Africa, agreed to a deal with the U.S. to take deported immigrants as long as they don’t have criminal records and are not unaccompanied minors.
In May 2024, the U.S. imposed sanctions on Uganda’s parliamentary speaker, her husband and several other officials over corruption and serious abuses of human rights.
In July, the U.S. deported five men with criminal backgrounds to the southern African kingdom of Eswatini. The men are from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Yemen and Vietnam and are being held in solitary confinement until they can be deported to their home countries. That process could take up to a year.
During a meeting in July at the White House, Trump met with five West African leaders and discussed whether they would accept immigrants through third-country agreements.
Experts say some African countries may seek to facilitate U.S. deportation programs in order to earn good will in negotiations over tariffs, cuts in U.S. aid or visa restrictions, which have hit several African countries in recent months.
Trump has also pressured countries across Latin America to help facilitate deportations, at times under the threat of steep tariffs or sanctions.
These agreements have drawn strong criticism from human rights advocates, who have cited international protections for asylum seekers and questioned whether immigrants will be appropriately screened before being deported.
United Nations human rights experts have said such agreements have left people stranded in faraway places, arbitrarily detained for years on end, and at risk of torture and other inhuman treatment.
“We urge the United States’ Government to refrain from any further removals to third countries, to ensure effective access to legal assistance for those facing deportation, and all such procedures to be subject to independent judicial oversight,” the U.N. experts said in July.
The European Union has been trying to increase deportations and has opened itself to the idea of “return hubs”, which would be set up in third countries for rejected asylum-seekers to be detained and ultimately deported to their home countries.
Italy has been sending rejected asylum-seekers to detention and deportation centers it runs in Albania, a non-EU country. However, it has faced many legal challenges and has been opaque about the process and effectiveness of the centers, with many immigrants sent there ultimately returning to Italy.
In a separate costly and controversial plan, the United Kingdom’s previous government had tried and ultimately failed to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, front left, and her husband Kilmar Abrego Garcia, front center, attend a protest rally at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore, Monday, Aug. 25, 2025, to support Kilmar Abrego Garcia. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
