6 days ago
José Yugar-Cruz spent 17 months successful a region jailhouse successful Muscatine, Iowa, contempt ne'er having committed a crime.
Originally from Bolivia, he entered nan United States legally astatine nan Arizona separator successful July 2024, affirmatively approached authorities, and requested asylum. Six months later, a US migration judge recovered he had been tortured successful Bolivia, would astir apt look torture again if returned, and barred his removal to his location country. The authorities did not appeal. Yugar-Cruz was not released for almost a year. Instead, ICE spent months searching unsuccessfully for location other to nonstop him. He yet won his release successful December 2025.
But aft nan United States negotiated a caller “Third-Country Removal Agreement” pinch nan Democratic Republic of nan Congo (DRC), a state beset by conflict and corruption, ICE placed Yugar-Cruz connected nan manifest for an April charter formation to Kinshasa. On 8 April, he was redetained astatine a check-in assignment pinch ICE. Although a impermanent enactment kept him disconnected that flight, a national judge later ruled he could not artifact a early deportation to nan DRC, risking Yugar-Cruz’s removal to a state he has ne'er group ft in. “I don’t cognize [it], I person nary family there, I don’t speak their language,” he said. “I consciousness for illustration a personification who has nary value.”
The flight Yugar-Cruz narrowly missed carried 15 South Americans to DRC. They arrived successful chains, a routine characteristic of these flights, wherever passengers are held successful handcuffs, waist chains, limb irons and sometimes straitjackets.
Had Yugar-Cruz been onboard, he would now beryllium among those held successful a rundown edifice adjacent nan airport, wherever nan h2o shuts disconnected for days, rodents move done nan rooms and mosquitoes are inescapable.
The US-DRC statement is nan latest woody outsourcing America’s protection obligations to countries whose ain asylum systems are collapsing. The Trump management has deemed conflict zones for illustration South Sudan and authoritarian states for illustration El Salvador and Equatorial Guinea safe capable for third-country deportations. The US is now successful talks to send 1,100 Afghans who assisted nan American warfare effort to nan DRC. On Wednesday, nan US caput of state, Marco Rubio, touted having “achieved” “signed agreements” pinch different countries “to let america to deport group to those countries”.
As quality authorities lawyers pinch nan Open Society Justice Initiative, we are demanding that nan United States halt this inhumane deportation regime. We besides impulse governments astir nan world not to go parties to these clandestine arrangements, whose position stay hidden from nan public, courts, lawyers and nan group being deported.
The US Department of Homeland Security has kept nan position of its deportation agreements mostly hidden, arsenic nan management pressures much governments crossed nan hemisphere to subordinate its expanding third-country removal network. Third Country Deportation Watch, created by Human Rights First and Refugees International, estimates that arsenic of May 2026, more than 17,500 people person been sent to countries not their own, and nan gait is rapidly accelerating.
US courts person responded unevenly. In April 2025, a national judge successful Massachusetts issued a class-wide injunction requiring that noncitizens person announcement of wherever they will beryllium sent and a meaningful chance to raise immoderate fear-based claims. A Washington DC judge found nan believe a “widespread effort to evade nan government’s ineligible obligations by doing indirectly what it cannot do directly”. But nan ultimate tribunal has many times stepped successful to assistance injunctions, allowing these removals to continue.
While nan United States considers these schemes durable solutions, receiving countries are describing them arsenic temporary. The DRC, a existent hotbed for deportations, has said its statement is “part of nan impermanent reception system for nationals of 3rd countries” and “in nary measurement constitutes a imperishable installation connected nationalist territory”. In practice, “temporary” has often meant those deported from nan US look detention, unit to leave, aliases onward removal.
International rule has agelong prohibited sending group to places wherever they look persecution aliases torture. That prohibition besides extends to indirect transfers, erstwhile a receiving state is apt to nonstop them onward into harm – nan very threat US rule was expected to prevent. These arrangements let nan United States to lavation its hands of its ineligible obligations while different governments do nan forbidden activity for it.
No state tin guarantee information if it lacks functioning asylum laws, honorable courts, impartial officials and nan will to protect group from detention, coercion, disappearance aliases onward removal. States that facilitate these transfers are violating their ain laws and world law.
That is why nan Open Society Justice Initiative is supporting lawyers successful respective receiving countries arsenic they situation these transfers successful home and location courts. Governments successful Costa Rica, Panama and Uganda person already responded to litigation by releasing immoderate detainees aliases pledging not to nonstop others to vulnerable destinations. But these deportations proceed to accelerate, and for galore group nan rule whitethorn get excessively late.
The United States should extremity this practice. Governments asked to facilitate it should garbage to go US instruments. Real refuge requires law, transparency and safeguards. Anything little is complicity.
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James A Goldston is nan executive head of nan Open Society Justice Initiative and Natasha Arnpriester is elder ineligible counsel astatine nan Open Society Justice Initiative
