The Trump administration has spent more than $30 million to ship migrants to far-flung countries that are not their personal, together with, in a number of cases, paying over $1 million an individual, a brand new report from the Democratic chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee says.
In different instances, the report alleges, the administration paid to deport the migrants to a 3rd nation, solely to pay once more to return them to their dwelling nation.
The report, launched Friday, says that the administration has inked the high-cost offers for the return of “relatively small numbers of third country nationals.”
The report, led by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, affords probably the most complete seems on the administration’s third-country deportation agreements, following criticism the federal government has been obscure in regards to the particulars of these offers.
The Trump administration has pursued the offers as a part of its aggressive deportation agenda, arguing that the immigrants deported to third countries would not have been accepted by their dwelling countries. Frosty diplomatic relations have traditionally made it troublesome for the US to return sure nationals to their countries of origin.
Under the agreements, countries agree – usually for cash, political favor, or each – to settle for immigrants from the US who’re not residents of these countries. Many of the efforts to deport these third nation nationals have been met with authorized challenges.
According to the report, the administration has an settlement with or has despatched third nation nationals to more than 20 countries and is pursuing offers with dozens more.
The minority report was additionally signed by Sens. Chris Coons, Tim Kaine, Tammy Duckworth, Jacky Rosen, and Chris Van Hollen. It notes that the “the total costs of the Trump Administration’s third country deportations through January 2026 are unknown but are likely upward of $40 million.”
Deals with 5 governments – Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, El Salvador, Eswatini, and Palau – have price more than $32 million, with a lot of that funding being supplied “as lump sum payments, often before any third country nationals arrived,” in accordance to the report.
The 5 countries that obtained the million-dollar funds have collectively solely obtained about 300 third nation nationals from the US.
The report notes that the administration usually makes use of high-cost navy plane to deport migrants, even for flights with solely a small variety of folks.
“The Trump Administration spent an estimated more than $7.2 million on third country deportation flights as of January 2026 to at least ten countries, with actual costs likely far higher,” the report states.
The report says it’s based mostly “on a review of agreements through January 2026, staff travel to relevant countries and meetings and communication with U.S. officials, foreign government officials, human rights organizations, deportees and attorneys.”
A Democratic committee aide mentioned they raised quite a few questions to the administration in restricted engagements. Although the administration supplied info in some instances, they’ve not briefed the committee on the agreements writ massive, the aide mentioned.
NCS has reached out to the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security for remark.
And “as of January 2026, more than eighty percent of the migrants sent to third countries the U.S. paid to take them in have already returned to their country of origin, or are in the process of doing so,” the report alleges.
Of the 5 countries that obtained the million-dollar funds of third-country nationals, El Salvador obtained essentially the most deported folks. Around 250 were despatched to that nation, which obtained a $4.76 million grant to imprison the deportees, who the administration alleged had ties to prison group Tren de Aragua. The alleged ties have been refuted by relations and in litigation. NCS reported final April that the grant was “to provide funds to be used by Salvadoran law enforcement and corrections agencies for its law enforcement needs, which include costs of detaining the 238 TDA members recently deported to El Salvador,” in accordance to an inner doc.
A federal choose on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to start implementing his requirement that it give Venezuelans unlawfully deported to El Salvador final 12 months underneath the Alien Enemies Act an opportunity to problem their elimination, together with by bringing not less than a few of them again to the US for courtroom proceedings.
However, solely 51 folks were despatched to the opposite 4 countries as of January 2026, in accordance to the report. Rwanda, which allegedly obtained $7.5 million from the US authorities, solely took seven third nation nationals, which means every deported nationwide price more than $1 million in US taxpayer cash, in accordance to the report.
Palau has not obtained any third nation nationals, though the report says they obtained a fee of $7.5 million from the administration. Efforts to strain the Palau authorities to take the third nation nationals met heavy pushback from locals.
When it comes to the distant countries of Palau and Eswatini, a US official reportedly advised the committee that “the point is that the Administration can threaten people that they will literally be dropped in the middle of nowhere.”
“The point is to scare people,” the official mentioned.
According to the report, a US official privately advised committee workers that the administration “is sometimes paying the country to take people, flying them there and then paying to take them to their home country.”
In one such occasion, a Mexican nationwide was deported from the US to South Sudan, solely to be flown again to Mexico, the report says.
In one other occasion, a Jamaican who had courtroom orders to return to their dwelling nation was despatched to Eswatini – which the report says got here at an estimated price of more than $181,000 – solely to then be flown again to Jamacia weeks later.
The report makes the case that the administration is finishing up these deportations at nice price to US taxpayers whereas “expending political capital in its bilateral relationships that could instead be used to advance pressing U.S. national security interests.”
Lawmakers and human rights teams have raised issues in regards to the countries with which the administration has offers. Many of these countries have an intensive historical past of human rights violations.
The Democratic report alleges that the administration has relied on blanket assurances that the deportees can be handled in accordance with worldwide human rights regulation.
However, the report states that “Trump Administration officials have acknowledged that countries are not upholding the assurances they provided the United States and that the Administration is not taking steps to address these violations.”
“The Administration has provided no evidence of systematic monitoring, follow-up or enforcement, raising serious concerns that these assurances exist on paper only,” the report states.
Staff from the committee heard from US officers in a single nation that obtained third nation nationals that the administration had instructed them not to follow-up on the remedy of the deportees, the report says.
A November report by Human Rights Watch and Central American rights group Cristosal alleged that dozens of Venezuelans deported from the US to a Salvadoran jail earlier this 12 months were subjected to torture and different severe abuses together with sexual violence.