A group of Democratic lawmakers called on the internal watchdogs of the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department on Tuesday to investigate the “unlawful and costly” policy of sending people to third countries to which they have no previous connections, according to a letter obtained exclusively by NBC News.
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“The Trump Administration has, with little or no notice, secretly deported individuals to countries they are not from, have no connection to, and sometimes have never heard of, leaving many feeling like victims of a human ‘smuggling operation,’” said the letter sent by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and Reps. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., and Troy Carter, D-La., which was signed by 26 other lawmakers.
The policy of sending immigrants to so-called third countries — typically when people are barred or protected from being sent back to their home countries or their home countries are not accepting people from the U.S. — has been a major and controversial departure from previous administrations.
The letter was sent to DHS’ inspector general and the State Department’s acting inspector general. Their offices did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A State Department spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News Wednesday that as a general matter it does not comment on congressional correspondence.
“Implementing the Trump Administration’s immigration policies is a top priority for the Department of State. As Secretary Rubio has said, we remain unwavering in our commitment to end illegal and mass immigration and bolster America’s border security,” the spokesperson said.
The agency declined to comment on details regarding its diplomatic communications with other governments.
A senior DHS official said in a statement about the third-country removals policy that the administration “is utilizing all lawful options to carry out the largest deportation operation in history, just as President Trump promised.” The agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the letter.
In a case that has drawn international attention, the Trump administration was in court Tuesday seeking to send Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was returned to the U.S. after his wrongful removal to El Salvador in March, to Liberia. A judge ordered in 2019 that Abrego was barred from being returned to El Salvador because of the danger he faced in his home country. Abrego has been fighting new deportation efforts as the administration seeks, instead, to deport him to a third country.
It will be the sixth country the Trump administration has tried to send Abrego to. Abrego’s attorney has argued that he has designated Costa Rica as his country of removal and claimed the Trump administration’s refusal to remove him to Costa Rica is “retaliatory.”
The lawmakers’ letter calls for an investigation and a report, including information about how many people who were subject to third-country removals had court-ordered protections not to be sent back to their home countries — and how many of them were later sent back to their countries of origin from the third countries.
In one case, a Guatemalan man was granted protection from removal to his home country, but he was then deported to Mexico without notice, according to court documents. Mexico then deported the man to Guatemala, “the country from which the United States has granted him protection, where he remains in hiding to this day,” the documents said.
In another case, a man from El Salvador was granted protection under the U.N. Convention Against Torture and barred from returning to his home country, according to a U.S. court document. That man was sent last year to Mexico, where authorities drove him to Guatemala, the documents said. From there, he was taken to El Salvador, where he told his brother that police said he was going to be taken to CECOT, a notorious megaprison in the country known for allegations of human rights abuses.
“I have not been able to communicate with my brother at all. I am afraid that he is in CECOT, and I am afraid for my brother’s safety,” the brother said in the court documents.
Yael Schacher, the director for the Americas and Europe at Refugees International, a nonprofit humanitarian group, said that “these have never been populations that any administration ever, Republican or Democrat, has targeted in this way.”
At a Cabinet meeting last April, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the administration was “actively searching for other countries to take people from third countries.”
“We are working with other countries to say we want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries. The further away from America, the better, so they can’t come back across the border. I’m not apologetic about it. We are doing that,” he said.
The Democrats’ letter calls for investigating whether DHS has been threatening asylum-seekers with third-country deportations, what benefits the administration has provided countries to accept deportees, how the government is tracking and confirming that deportees will not face torture in third countries and how much the administration has spent on the policy.
DHS declined to comment on how many people it has sent to third countries. The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, estimates there were 15,000 third-country deportations from Jan. 20, 2025, to Dec. 31, with 13,000 of the people being sent to Mexico.
“Very little is known about what has happened to the 15,000 or so individuals sent to third countries, nor is there systematic monitoring of compliance by partner countries,” MPI wrote in an analysis last month.
Andrew Selee, MPI’s president, said that while there had been individual cases in which people were sent to third countries during previous administrations, “we’ve never seen it on this scale.”
While there is a legal framework under U.S. law to send people to third countries under certain circumstances, Selee said, it remained unclear whether the administration was following it, alleging a lack of transparency.
The policy is being challenged in court. A federal judge ruled in February that third-country removals were illegal and that people must receive meaningful notice and the chance to challenge their deportations. The government has filed an appeal, and the policy remains in effect pending that appeal.
As of March, ICE had more than 500 people in custody scheduled for third-country deportations, according to the lawmakers’ letter, which cited a government declaration in the court case challenging the policy, adding that DHS “signaled that it had its sights on deporting over 8,000 people to third countries.”
The administration has entered into third-country agreements with at least 27 countries, including El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini and Rwanda, according to a Senate Democratic minority report, which said that though the costs of third-country deportations were unknown, they are “likely upward of $40 million.”
Refugees International, along with Human Rights First, a nonprofit group, created a project called Third Country Deportation Watch, which tracks the agreements the U.S. has made with other countries, as well as any known transfers of people to those countries.
Schacher said some of the countries have records of human rights abuses and corruption.
According to Third Country Deportation Watch, nine people from other countries were sent to Cameroon in January, eight of whom had been granted protection by U.S. judges barring their removal to their home countries.
The first known instance of the administration’s sending migrants to third countries came in the announcement last year that 240 Venezuelan migrants were sent to CECOT prison in El Salvador.
The Trump administration accused the men of being gang members connected with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, claims their lawyers and families denied.
The men were sent back to Venezuela from El Salvador in July as part of a prisoner swap between the two countries. Many of the men have said they suffered physical and psychological abuse while they were imprisoned in CECOT.
In February, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to start allowing Venezuelans sent to CECOT to return to the U.S. for their immigration proceedings if they chose to.
A New York Times investigation found that most of the men sent to CECOT did not have criminal records in the U.S. or in the region. At least 32 of the more than 200 men faced serious criminal accusations or convictions in the U.S. or abroad. Documented evidence appears to connect very few of them to Tren de Aragua.
Late last month, a Venezuelan man sent to CECOT filed a $1.3 million lawsuit against the Trump administration.
Selee said that while there have not been huge numbers of people sent to third countries so far, another major consequence of the policy was deterrence. “It’s the fear of people thinking they might get deported somewhere else. … It’s the sum of efforts that deter people by making it look like you could end up being sent anywhere.”