The Countries

Thirty-five states are recorded as having agreed to receive, or as having received, people removed from the United States who are not their nationals. Twenty-eight have received them. The monitoring organisations describe more than 23,000 transfers and more than $49 million in United States funding connected to the arrangements. This section profiles each state: the arrangement as reported, the transfers as reported, the state’s human rights record as documented by the United States Department of State and United Nations bodies, and what the reported outcomes show.

How to read the labels

Torture record means the State Department or a United Nations body has documented torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by state officials, security forces or prison personnel. Custodial abuse means documented mistreatment in custody short of a finding of systematic official torture. No finding cited means the report relied on contains no finding of official torture. It is a statement about the absence of a finding, not a finding that the state is safe, and it does not resolve the question for any individual. UN on this programme means United Nations special procedures have addressed the United States transfers to that state specifically, rather than the state’s record generally. Has received means at least one transfer is publicly documented.

Two limits apply to every profile. The absence of work authorisation is not itself refoulement, and detention is not itself torture. They become significant in combination: where a state gives a transferred person no lawful path to remain, no authorisation to work, no protection status, confinement, and release only on agreement to return home, the description of the transfer as resettlement becomes difficult to sustain.

Where the information comes from

The arrangement and transfer details in each profile are drawn from the organisations monitoring the programme, principally Human Rights First, Refugees International, and the Third Country Deportations tracker maintained by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, together with reporting by the Associated Press, Reuters, CBS News, Al Jazeera, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Each profile says “reported” where that is the basis. The human rights record in each profile is drawn from the State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, linked for 2023 and 2024, and from the concluding observations of the Committee against Torture and other United Nations bodies, which can be found for each state in the treaty body database. The 2024 series of State Department reports, released on 12 August 2025, was restructured and shortened; Human Rights Watch and members of Congress have criticised the resulting reports for omitting or minimising categories of abuse recorded in earlier editions. The 2023 reports are considerably more detailed on torture, detention and police conduct, and the profiles rely on them. The earlier findings have not been withdrawn, and the United Nations findings stand independently of both.

General sources: USCRI Third Country Deportations tracker · Human Rights Watch, 23 September 2025 · State Department 2023 reports (index) · State Department 2024 reports (index) · OHCHR treaty body database. [Human Rights First and Refugees International publications to be linked on publication.]

What the profiles show together

The receiving states are not alike, and the difference is the point. Roughly a third carry no cited finding of official torture. One, Uganda, is reported to have granted refugee status to two of eight transferees. Others are reported to have told arrivals that they could not remain and would be returned, to have held transferees in detention until they agreed to go home, or to have returned every member of a cohort to the country of nationality. A person’s position therefore depends on which state he is sent to and on what that state does with him, which is why the law described in this project turns on the conditions on arrival rather than on the fact of transfer.

Africa

The Americas and the Caribbean

Europe, Central Asia and the Pacific

States considered and not included

Five states were considered and are not counted. The Bahamas and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines are recorded as having negotiated, with the Bahamas recorded as having initially refused. Uruguay is recorded as negotiating rather than concluded. Libya was identified as an intended destination and a transfer was attempted in connection with litigation, but there is not sufficient evidence of a concluded and operating arrangement. Nicaragua is reported to have received foreign nationals in a United States-organised operation without an arrangement comparable to those above, and is better described as an ad hoc acceptance. The standard applied to inclusion is an arrangement acknowledged by one of the governments, a disclosed diplomatic instrument, an asylum cooperation agreement, or operational cooperation demonstrating the receiving government’s consent.

This page describes the public record. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for a lawyer. The Coalition does not represent individuals. Organisations that do are listed under Where to Find Help.