Nika is a 32 year old from Iran. She now lives in the Central African Republic, a country she had never visited before the U.S. deported her there. She told the Guardian that she rarely leaves home and can’t go anywhere without a driver arranged by an aid group. She has no work and doesn’t speak the local language, so her future is unclear. She is one of more than 25,000 people the administration has sent to countries other than their own.
Background
Most of those removals went to Mexico, which has taken roughly 20,000 non-Mexican nationals. Everywhere else, the numbers drop off sharply. As we reported in May, the government had issued third country removal notices to more than 24,000 people since January 2025, but it actually sent only a small share of them to a third country. The agreements themselves are a big reason. Honduras, for example, agreed to accept only ten non-Honduran deportees a month and had received sixty as of April 2026.
Impact
The U.S. now has third country agreements with 35 countries, most of them in Africa and Latin America. The people being sent there have very different histories. Some crossed the border recently without papers. Others lived here for decades. Nika had won protection from removal to Iran, and a judge had ordered her released from detention. Immigration and Customs enforcement (ICE) rearrested her at a check-in weeks later and put her on the flight to Bangui.
In September, a federal judge in Colorado ordered the government to return Brayan Omar Sanchez Servellon, a Honduran man with Convention Against Torture protection who had been deported to the Central African Republic in August. It’s still unclear whether the government will comply.
As always, ILBSG actively monitors ongoing U.S. immigration news. If you have questions about any U.S. immigration related issue, contact us. Working with an experienced attorney ensures you get the right advice based on the most recent laws. In an ever-evolving immigration policy landscape, it’s particularly critical you get the right advice.