UN experts warn Trump’s third-country deportations risk torture
Joint statement by 24 UN-linked experts says removing migrants to countries where they have no ties exposes them to torture, trafficking and enforced disappearance
NEW YORK (MNTV) — United Nations human-rights experts have warned that the Trump administration’s deportation of migrants to countries where they have no personal or legal ties is creating serious human-rights risks, including torture, trafficking, enforced disappearance and other abuse.
Since Trump returned to office in 2025, the U.S. has reached agreements with 35 countries to receive migrants who are not their nationals.
According to Refugees International and Human Rights First, about 20,000 people have been bused to Mexico, while more than 5,000 others have been flown to countries across Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Central Asia.
In a joint statement, 24 experts advising the UN Human Rights Council, backed by a special rapporteur from the African Commission, said they had contacted the US and the receiving governments and called for the policy to be halted immediately.
The consequences, they warned, are no longer hypothetical: sending people to unfamiliar countries can expose them to torture, ill-treatment, trafficking and discrimination, especially those already vulnerable because of gender, sexual orientation or human-rights activism.
Though the administration says it targets people with criminal records, journalists have documented deportees who do not fit that description, including an Iranian woman who fled political repression after joining protests and a gay man who left Ghana under threats from relatives.
Lawyers argue the policy can also undermine protections against refoulement, since migrants transferred to a third country may later be removed to the very place they fled.
The experts also questioned the capacity of receiving states — some beset by conflict, displacement and food insecurity — to protect deportees.
Beatrice Njeri of the Global Strategic Litigation Council cited two men deported to Equatorial Guinea who were allegedly restrained, beaten and subjected to degrading treatment on arrival.
The broader concern, the experts said, is that enforcement is shifting responsibility for vulnerable migrants onto countries that may lack the means to protect them, raising fundamental questions of human dignity and the protection of people fleeing persecution.
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