Trump Administration’s Third-Country Deportations

The banality of cruelty knows no bounds

By: Austin Abbring

September 24, 2026

The Trump administration continues a deportation process with not a single modicum of human dignity behind it. The administration has struck deals with 35 countries, primarily in Africa and South America, which have seen the deportation of at least 25,000 individuals who have no connections to the country they are being deported to. Of the approximate 700,000 formal deportations since President Trump took office in 2025, at least 25,000 of those people have been shipped off to far-flung places that they have zero ties to. All of this over paperwork discrepancies and a white nationalist movement which remains uber alles for the Republican Party.

You do not have to take my word for it either. These third-country deportations have taken place under a new office creation within the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration called the Office of Remigration. If you are wondering where that name “Office of Remigration” originates from, it is tied to far-right political and white nationalist movements in European countries like Austria, Germany, Italy, France, Hungary, et cetera. This “remigration” project is led primarily by none other than Joseph Goebbels - I mean Stephen Miller - and Christian Ehrdardt. This further ossifies the principle that the Republican Party is a genuine far-right movement, as opposed to the Democratic Party, which functions as a centrist party when we compare the two to international political movements.  

Of these 25,000 deportees, around 20,000 have been chartered to Mexico, and the remainder sent to Africa, Caribbean nations, and other Latin American countries. While the exact details remain murky, the Trump administration is pledging over $400 million in taxpayer dollars to these 35 countries in exchange for them accepting the individuals being deported. Countries such as Rwanda, El Salvador, and Palau are receiving between $5 and $7 million alone. In the case of Rwanda, it is costing U.S. taxpayers over $1 million per deportee due to the small number of people actually being deported to it and to the countries previously mentioned. If that is not the epitome of inefficiency, I don't know what is. If you want to examine this from an economic lens and assume all of these people being deported are actually undocumented, it is far more efficient to actually keep them in our country than to spend such absurd amounts of money deporting them. It is well known that undocumented immigrants pay billions of dollars into Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and other social insurance programs every single year and cannot receive any of those benefits. It is an extreme fiscal net positive. 

Now I would be much happier if we had a realistic pathway to citizenship so immigrants have the same employment protections you and I have, are paid higher wages that further stimulate state and federal economies, and are statutorily eligible to receive benefits from the programs they subsidize. All in all, the obvious goal is to stop scapegoating immigrants for systemic shortcomings American society faces, which both political parties have failed to seriously address, and to prevent American companies and businesses from exploiting them. Basic human dignity is radical stuff, I know. My concern isn't necessarily the inefficiency, logistically or financially; it is the human element. I do not want us to always think of immigrants in terms of dollars or logistics. Every individual sacrificed more than any of us can comprehend to get to America, work, function in our society, and better their lives, which, on net, benefits each and every last one of us daily. Each person has a story and a unique skill set. Each person has a family and a history, just like you and I do. We can justify our beliefs in figures and dollars, but if there is any effective way to make MAGA voters feel any of the frustration people on the left feel about their immigration position, it is to try and make them empathize. 

We must always remind them that our differences are almost unrecognizable when it comes to the immigrant community. The overwhelming majority of us are working-class people who just want to get by and love our families, our partners, or our hobbies. Imagine yourself crossing the border, legally or illegally, just to escape whatever it is from your present country - persecution, violence, political unrest, financial reasons, whatever. You find employment, you meet someone, and start a family. You work hard, participate in your local community, your kid makes friends, and then all of a sudden you are detained by paramilitary thugs, held in a mass detention center, and deported to a country you have never been to. You have no cultural connection, no family ties, you have no comprehension of the customs, and the people may speak an entirely different language than you. I mean, it is not entirely different from being plucked from planet Earth and dropped onto Mars. Imagine yourself never seeing your family again in an instant. One night you are a neighbor in Chicago, the next day you are held captive in an ICE facility, and the month after you are in Sierra Leone. 

Crossing the border illegally is a civil violation, in the same way that receiving a parking ticket, speeding ticket, or jaywalking is. Do these punishments we have all witnessed under this administration and prior ones fit the crime? Not even remotely close. The Democratic Party absolutely must take a position on immigration. Being a placeholder for "not Donald Trump" is not a position. Just being an opposition party, and an immensely ineffective one at that, is not a position. There needs to be a unified front that the leadership in the party rallies its lawmakers around. Even if it is not perfect at the get-go and needs reform over time, that is far more digestible than allowing the Republican Party to continue to brutalize people and essentially end migration to this country. 

Let’s get one thing straight. Donald Trump is a symptom, not the disease. The GOP’s 2028 candidate won't move a single iota further left. The party is not suddenly going to shift to a more traditional conservative form of republicanism. The GOP is an ultra-nationalist and far-right party, and it has been moving further and further to the right for decades. For decades! The Democratic Party needs new leadership, needs to stop participating in performative “play-by-the-rules” politics, needs to start taking more hardline positions, needs to be a real opposition party, and must unify in the way the Republican Party rules with its iron-fist ideology amongst itself. I am not suggesting doing so in an authoritarian manner, but rather in a unifying manner so that its messaging is clear and consistent among its congressional caucus and to voters. If not, we will be fighting the same battle forever, and then losing to a Republican Party that is carrying out illegal third-country deportations.