The Trump administration has deported more than 25,000 people to countries that are not their own under at least 35 agreements with foreign governments — and a federal appeals court just ruled the policy unlawful, giving the administration 90 days to appeal before anything changes. For ordinary Americans, the question is straightforward: does the United States have the right to remove people who entered illegally, or does the permanent legal class get a veto on sovereignty through procedural delay?
The Guardian, as part of a 24-outlet consortium coordinated by Paris-based Forbidden Stories, frames the policy as cruelty — "banished to alien lands," "shadowy deals," detainees in shackles. The human stories are real: an Iranian woman who fled regime protests, identified as Nika, was granted legal protections by a judge, rearrested by DHS within two weeks, and flown 7,000 miles to the Central African Republic — a country the U.S. State Department itself warns Americans not to visit. She told the Guardian: "I don't know anything about Africa."
But the broader picture the Guardian buries is this: about 20,000 of the 25,000 were bussed to Mexico, according to counts by Refugees International and Human Rights First. More than 5,000 were flown to nations in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Central Asia — places with no prior connection to the deportees. The consortium tracked over 100 flights to 28 countries. People from Peru and Colombia landed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Four Cubans, a Brazilian, and a Cameroonian refused to disembark in Liberia in August; they were rerouted to Equatorial Guinea.
Human rights lawyers call the third-country arrangements a "show of force" meant to deter illegal entry. The Trump administration plainly agrees — deterrence is the point. Every sovereign nation has the authority to decide who enters and who stays. The alternative is an open border with a litigation treadmill, which is what the prior two decades delivered.
That said, the due process question is not trivial. A three-judge federal appeals panel ruled unanimously that the third-country removals violate due process. The government is expected to appeal. Nika's case illustrates the tension: a judge granted her protections, DHS rearrested her anyway, and now she sits in a country the U.S. government considers too dangerous for its own citizens — waiting to learn if she'll be sent back to Iran, where the regime she protested has only grown more lethal. The Guardian leans hard on these cases to suggest the entire policy is lawless. That's a frame, not a fact. The court ruling addresses process, not the principle that America can deport illegal entrants.
The real failure here is bipartisan. For decades, both parties talked border security while the crossings continued, the cartels profited, and fentanyl killed. Trump's third-country deals are a blunt instrument born of that failure — and the courts will decide whether the bluntness crosses a constitutional line. The Guardian wants you to see only the shackles. Americans who've watched their communities hollowed out by open-border policy see something else: a government finally willing to act.
