# International Coalition to End Torture


## Posts

- [Liberia Agreed in September 2025. Liberians Were Told in August 2026.](https://endtorture.org/liberia-agreed-september-2025-liberians-told-august-2026/): The agreement under which people are flown from the United States to Liberia was published by the Department of State in March 2026 and announced to Liberians in August. It sets no limit on numbers, provides nothing about lawyers, detention or monitoring, and makes signed operating procedures a condition of any transfer. No such procedures have been produced.
- [Fourteen People Won Protection in American Courts. Now They Are Before the African Commission.](https://endtorture.org/fourteen-people-african-commission-equatorial-guinea/): On 5 June 2026 five organisations filed a complaint against Equatorial Guinea at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, for fourteen people sent there from the United States. Every one of them had been granted protection by an American immigration judge. Three months on, the Commission has announced nothing.
- [The Plane Landed in Monrovia at 12:45. By Evening It Was in Malabo.](https://endtorture.org/the-plane-landed-in-monrovia-at-1245/): Six people refused to get off a United States removal flight in Liberia, saying it was not their country and that they would face danger there. They were told they would be flown back to the United States. The same aircraft landed that evening in Equatorial Guinea.
- [She Filed Her Own Habeas Petition From Detention. Two Days After Her Reply Was Docketed, She Was Flown to Liberia.](https://endtorture.org/she-filed-her-own-habeas-petition-from-detention/): Paola Ferreira Dos Santos filed her own petition for habeas corpus from immigration detention in Texas in March. A judge ordered the government to state the status of her removal proceedings. Her reply was entered on the docket on 17 August. On 19 August she was flown to Liberia. The petition has never been decided.
- [Twenty Were Flown to Liberia on 20 August. Five Were Put Back on the Plane.](https://endtorture.org/twenty-flown-to-liberia-five-put-back-on-the-plane/): Roughly twenty people landed at Monrovia on 20 August. Five refused to leave the aircraft and, Reuters reported, were taken on to Equatorial Guinea. Most of the fifteen who remained had already won an order from an American court forbidding their return to their own countries.
- [The Rules Say the Country Must Be Named. Two Courts Said So in 1998 and 1999.](https://endtorture.org/naming-the-country-of-removal/): Two provisions of the removal regulations require the immigration judge to identify the alternative countries on the record, and to tell a person who fears one of them that he may apply for protection against being sent there. Courts of appeals said the same in 1998 and 1999. In O.C.G.'s hearing no alternative country was identified, and when he raised Mexico himself he was told it could not happen.
- [A Man With Protection From Guatemala Was Put on a Bus to Mexico. Mexico Sent Him Back to Guatemala.](https://endtorture.org/ocg-guatemala-mexico-onward-removal/): An immigration judge found he would more likely than not suffer serious harm in Guatemala. Two days later he was removed to Mexico without notice, and Mexico sent him to Guatemala. A federal judge ordered the government to bring him back, and the court has since recorded that the government did.
- [Liberia Agreed to Take 1,200 People Who Are Not Liberian. The Times Reported a Five Million Dollar Payment.](https://endtorture.org/liberia-1200-people-five-million-dollar-payment/): Liberia announced it would accept up to 1,200 people removed from the United States, none of them Liberian, and called the decision entirely humanitarian. Two days later The New York Times reported a five million dollar payment.
- [49,571 Arrests in One Month. One Every Fifty-Four Seconds.](https://endtorture.org/49571-arrests-in-one-month/): Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 49,571 people in July 2026, from the agency's own records. Al Jazeera English sets that beside more than 476,000 removal orders in nine months.
- [Forty Hours Outside a House in Frederick, Maryland. Then Batons, and No One Arrested.](https://endtorture.org/forty-hours-outside-a-house-in-frederick-maryland/): Federal immigration agents held position outside a Frederick home for about forty hours. On the second night they drove onto the pavement, used batons on the neighbours who had gathered, and left without arresting anyone. The city police were not told the operation was happening.
- [He Has Held Protection Since 2018. He Was Called In Three Months Early and Listed for Equatorial Guinea.](https://endtorture.org/protection-since-2018-called-in-early-listed-for-equatorial-guinea/): A man who has held protection against removal since 2018 was telephoned by an immigration officer and told to report the next morning, three months before his scheduled appointment. He was detained when he arrived, and the government sought to send him to Equatorial Guinea. A federal judge has stopped it for now. The video @abc7la A longtime West Hollywood resident from Brazil was suddenly detained by ICE agents during an immigration check-in and friends fear he could be deported to Guyana. Alex Pereira-Alves, a Brazilian immigrant turned years-long West Hollywood resident who was working as a security guard and personal…
- [CGTN America on the Expansion of Third-Country Removals](https://endtorture.org/cgtn-america-on-the-expansion-of-third-country-removals/): A Chinese state broadcaster covering removals from the United States to Africa. Carried as commentary, labelled as state media, and relied on for nothing.
- [Sent to a Country at War, on a Three-Month Visa](https://endtorture.org/sent-to-a-country-at-war-on-a-three-month-visa/): CNN International reached the people the United States transferred to the Central African Republic. Most of them hold court orders from American judges saying they cannot be sent home.
- [Armed Police Draw Weapons on People Held in Malabo, for the Second Time in Five Weeks](https://endtorture.org/armed-police-malabo-second-time-in-five-weeks/): Reuters obtained footage from inside the Bamy Hotel in Malabo. It began when a man asked for the phone he needed to call his lawyer.
- [Nineteen Seconds on a Local Broadcast. The Ruling Itself Is the Citation.](https://endtorture.org/nineteen-seconds-local-broadcast-ruling-is-the-citation/): A North Carolina broadcaster reported in nineteen seconds that a federal judge held the third-country removal policy unlawful. The clip is worth carrying. It is not a substitute for the ruling.
- [Internal Government Documents: More Than 100 People Sent to Eight African States, Many With No Criminal History](https://endtorture.org/internal-documents-more-than-100-people-eight-african-states/): CBS News obtained internal United States government documents on the expansion of third-country removals. They record people sent to eight African states, and that many had no criminal history beyond immigration violations.
- [More Than 23,000 People Sent to Third Countries. Where They Went Is the Part That Matters.](https://endtorture.org/more-than-23000-people-sent-to-third-countries/): Refugees International puts the total at more than 23,000 people sent to 26 countries. Almost 20,000 went to Mexico, and more than 330 to the whole of Africa. The breakdown changes what the number means.
- [They Refused to Leave the Plane in Liberia. Reuters Has Now Said Where They Went.](https://endtorture.org/liberia-refused-to-leave-the-plane-where-they-went/): CBS News filmed twenty people landing at Roberts International Airport on 20 August and reported that some refused to leave the aircraft. Reuters has now reported where those people were taken.
- [What the Removal Figures Show, and What the Government Stopped Publishing](https://endtorture.org/removal-figures-and-what-the-government-stopped-publishing/): Mass deportation is a claim about scale. It can be tested against the government’s own statistics up to January 2025, when the government stopped publishing them. Removals are rising sharply and may reach a historic high, and nobody outside the government can confirm it.
- [A Federal Court Set the Third-Country Removal Policy Aside. It Is Not in Force.](https://endtorture.org/dvd-third-country-removal-policy-set-aside-and-stayed/): On 25 February 2026 the District of Massachusetts set the government’s third-country removal policy aside as unlawful. Three weeks later the First Circuit stayed that judgment pending appeal. The appeal was argued on 13 May 2026 and has not been decided, so the policy the district court struck down is the policy still being applied.
- [Court Orders Release and Reinstates Supervision After ICE Gave No Reasons for Re-Detention](https://endtorture.org/juarez-gonzalez-v-noem-order-of-supervision-revocation/): A federal court in California ordered the release of a man re-detained after years on an order of supervision, finding the notice he was given stated no reasons for the revocation. The government told the court it had no opposition argument to present.
- [She Won Her Case, and Was Deported Anyway: A Maryland Nurse Sent Through Ghana](https://endtorture.org/maryland-nurse-withholding-of-removal-ghana-sierra-leone/): On September 17, 2025 an immigration judge granted Rabbiatu Kuyateh withholding of removal to Sierra Leone, and both sides waived appeal. Forty-nine days later the United States flew her to Ghana without telling her where she was going, and six days after that Ghanaian officers dragged her out of a hotel and flew her to Sierra Leone.
- [Ghana Offered a Safe Haven. What the July 31 Flight Met Instead](https://endtorture.org/ghana-safe-haven-july-31-2026-flight-third-country-removals/): Ghana's foreign minister said on camera in September 2025 that his country was offering itself as a safe haven to West Africans deported by the United States, and that those who arrived could stay ninety days. Ten months later a flight landed in Accra carrying more than thirty people, every one of whom held a United States finding that they could not safely be returned home. Within a day, some of them were.
- [Before Ghana, Djibouti: What ICE’s Own Declaration Says About U.S. Third-Country Removals](https://endtorture.org/djibouti-camp-lemonnier-third-country-deportations-ice-declaration/): Four months before the deportation flights to Ghana, a court order stranded eight men on a United States naval base in Djibouti. What conditions were like there is not a matter of allegation. It is set out by the government itself, in a sworn declaration by a senior ICE official, and the Coalition publishes that declaration in full.
- [Why Facilities Holding Transferred People Fall Within OPCAT Monitoring](https://endtorture.org/opcat-monitoring-facilities-holding-transferred-people/): A facility holding people transferred from another state is a place of detention like any other. In an OPCAT State Party it falls within the National Preventive Mechanism's visiting mandate.
- [Withholding and CAT Deferral: What the Protection Covers, and What It Does Not](https://endtorture.org/withholding-cat-deferral-what-protection-covers/): Withholding of removal and deferral under the Convention Against Torture are findings about one named country. Understanding that limit is essential when a transfer to a different country is proposed.
- [A Lawful Order, Carried Out in a Way the Constitution May Not Permit](https://endtorture.org/the-manner-of-removal-shackles-straitjackets-military-aircraft/): In death penalty cases a court may stay an execution because the method would be cruel, without disturbing the sentence. This article is about the second question only: not whether a person may be removed, but how it is being done to them.
- [Special Rapporteur on Torture: Assessments Must Cover the Whole Chain of Transfer](https://endtorture.org/special-rapporteur-torture-whole-chain-of-transfer/): On 28 July 2026 the UN Special Rapporteur on torture addressed states overhauling their removal systems, emphasising individualised assessment and analysis of the entire chain of transfer.
- [UN Experts Urge Torture-Risk Assessment Before Any Transfer to a Third Country](https://endtorture.org/un-experts-torture-risk-assessment-third-country-transfers/): Seven United Nations special procedures mandates issued a joint statement on 8 July 2025 urging that torture risks be assessed before any person is transferred to a country other than their own.
- [Law Societies in Uganda Challenge the Arrival of Twelve Men Transferred From the United States](https://endtorture.org/uganda-law-societies-challenge-arrival-of-deportees/): Al Jazeera reported that twelve people transferred from the United States arrived at Entebbe on 2 April 2026, and that the Uganda Law Society and East Africa Law Society brought a court challenge.
- [Constructive Refoulement: When a Return Recorded as Voluntary Is Not a Free Choice](https://endtorture.org/constructive-refoulement-pressure-to-return/): International law prohibits achieving by pressure what a state may not order directly. Where detention, destitution or indefinite limbo leave a protected person no real alternative to returning, the departure is not voluntary in law.
- [Ten Cases, Eleven Decisions: What Courts Have Said About Removal as Punishment](https://endtorture.org/courts-on-third-country-removal-as-punishment/): Between August 2025 and March 2026, federal courts answered the same question eleven times. Six held that third-country removal paired with imprisonment is intended as punishment and violates due process. Five declined. None rejected the principle, and what divides them is evidence about the destination.
- [Amnesty International Documents Continued Transfers to Eswatini Under US Removal Arrangement](https://endtorture.org/amnesty-documents-transfers-eswatini-matsapha/): Amnesty International has documented successive transfers of third-country nationals from the United States to Eswatini, where it reports the men are held at a maximum-security prison without ties to the country.
- [US Court Sets Aside Third-Country Removal Policy; Appeal Court Stays the Judgment](https://endtorture.org/dvd-v-dhs-third-country-removal-policy-litigation/): A US district court held in February 2026 that people facing removal to a third country are entitled to meaningful notice and an opportunity to raise a country-specific claim. The judgment was stayed on appeal in March 2026.
- [Federal Filing Details How People Sent Through Ghana Were Returned to Countries Where Judges Found Risks of Torture](https://endtorture.org/federal-filing-details-how-u-s-deportees-sent-through-ghana-were-returned-to-countries-where-judges-found-risks-of-torture/): A sworn declaration filed in D.V.D. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security describes two U.S. deportation flights to Ghana and alleges that people with CAT protection and withholding of removal were subsequently sent to countries where U.S. immigration judges had already found they faced persecution or torture.
- [Monitoring Organisations Document Detention of Transferred People on Arrival](https://endtorture.org/monitoring-organisations-document-detention-on-arrival/): Human Rights Watch and the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants have documented what happens to people on arrival in receiving countries. Conditions on arrival bear directly on whether a transfer is consistent with Article 3.
- [Eleven West Africans Challenge Detention in Ghana After Transfer From the United States](https://endtorture.org/11-west-african-deportees-challenge-detention-in-ghana-after-u-s-third-country-deportations/): Eight reportedly received U.S. withholding of removal or Convention Against Torture protection before being deported to Ghana, raising questions about detention, third-country removal and non-refoulement.

## Pages

- [Home](https://endtorture.org/)
- [Privacy Policy](https://endtorture.org/privacy-policy/): Who we are Suggested text: Our website address is: endtorture.org. Comments Suggested text: When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment. Media Suggested text:…
- [Sudan](https://endtorture.org/projects/protection-against/sudan/): Sudan signed the Convention against Torture on 4 June 1986 and acceded to it thirty-five years later, on 10 August 2021. It submitted an initial report in September 2022. The Committee against Torture has never examined it, and there are no concluding observations on Sudan to cite. Sudan is not South Sudan. They are different states with different treaty histories. South Sudan is covered separately, as a receiving state, on the South Sudan page. Why this page exists Sudan is one of the countries people in the register hold protection against. A United States immigration judge granted withholding of removal to…
- [Venezuela](https://endtorture.org/projects/protection-against/venezuela/): Venezuela is one of the few countries on this page against which an individual can complain to the Committee against Torture. It accepted that procedure in 1994. The Committee has since found torture and ill-treatment inflicted on people arrested during protests. A United States immigration judge has granted withholding of removal to Venezuela under the Convention against Torture. Why this page exists Venezuela is one of the countries people in the register hold protection against. It has no arrangement with the United States to receive people removed from elsewhere and does not appear in the States Engaging in Refoulement project. What…
- [Nicaragua](https://endtorture.org/projects/protection-against/nicaragua/): A United States immigration judge has found that a man was tortured by the government of Nicaragua and faces a more than fifty per cent likelihood of being tortured again if returned. Nicaragua signed the Convention against Torture on 15 April 1985 and ratified it on 5 July 2005. It has not accepted the individual complaint procedure. Why this page exists Nicaragua is one of the countries people in the register hold protection against. It has no arrangement with the United States to receive people and does not appear in the States Engaging in Refoulement project. What Nicaragua has accepted The…
- [The Gambia](https://endtorture.org/projects/protection-against/the-gambia/): The Gambia signed the Convention against Torture on 23 October 1985 and did not ratify it for thirty-three years, acceding on 28 September 2018. Its initial report to the Committee against Torture fell due on 28 October 2019. It has never been filed, and the Committee has never examined The Gambia. There are no concluding observations to cite. Why this page exists The Gambia is one of the countries people in the register hold protection against. This page exists partly to record an absence. Where other pages on this site quote a finding of a United Nations body, here there is…
- [Nigeria](https://endtorture.org/projects/protection-against/nigeria/): Nigeria signed the Convention against Torture on 28 July 1988 and ratified it on 28 June 2001, thirteen years later. It has not accepted the individual complaint procedure. When the Committee against Torture came to examine Nigeria in 2021, Nigeria had not filed a report, and the Committee proceeded without one. Why this page exists Nigeria is one of the countries people in the register hold protection against. It does not appear in the States Engaging in Refoulement project and has no arrangement with the United States to receive people. What Nigeria has accepted The depositary record shows signature on 28…
- [Russia](https://endtorture.org/projects/protection-against/russia/): The Russian Federation is a party to the Convention against Torture and, unusually among the countries on this page, an individual subject to its jurisdiction can complain to the Committee against Torture about it. The Committee has found torture practised in Russia as a means of extracting confessions. A United States immigration judge has granted withholding of removal to Russia. Why this page exists Russia is one of the countries people in the register are resisting being returned to. It has no arrangement with the United States to receive people removed from it, and it does not appear in the States…
- [Cuba](https://endtorture.org/projects/protection-against/cuba/): Six matters in the Coalition’s register concern Cuban nationals resisting removal. Cuba signed the Convention against Torture on 27 January 1986 and ratified it on 17 May 1995. It has never accepted the article 22 procedure, so no individual can take a complaint about Cuba to the Committee against Torture. Why this page exists Cuba is not a state that removes people. It has no arrangement with the United States to receive anybody, and it does not appear in the States Engaging in Refoulement project. It appears here because it is one of the countries people in the register are resisting…
- [The Laws That Protect People From Torture](https://endtorture.org/the-law/): Two rules run through everything on this site. A state may not torture anyone. A state may not send anyone to a place where they face torture. Most people have never read either rule. Both are set out below, in full, in the words of the treaties and the statutes themselves. Under each provision are the decisions that have applied it, with the citation needed to find them. Where the Coalition has not yet confirmed a decision applying a provision, the entry says Investigating rather than leaving a blank. Nothing on this page is advice about anyone’s case. It is the…
- [Armenia](https://endtorture.org/projects/where-the-prohibition-is-being-broken/armenia/): What has happened The European Court of Human Rights has found that Armenian police tortured a man in custody, and that Armenia then failed to investigate it properly. The United Nations Committee against Torture reported in April 2025 that the conduct has not stopped, describing continuing allegations of police violence to extract confessions and of force used against demonstrators that left lasting injuries. The same Committee recorded reports that Armenian military forces killed, tortured and ill-treated Azerbaijani prisoners of war and other protected persons, and that no one has been charged. A finding of torture by Armenian police In Virabyan v.…
- [Countries Named in Protection Orders](https://endtorture.org/projects/protection-against/): Countries a court has found it unsafe to return a particular person to. Membership is set by the Coalition's own register of court decisions, not by any assessment of danger. Protection is granted to a person, never to a nationality.
- [Vietnam](https://endtorture.org/projects/protection-against/vietnam/): The country most often at issue in the Coalition's register. Vietnam joined the Convention against Torture and then declined three of its four supervisory mechanisms. In 2025 the Human Rights Committee found torture used to extract confessions, falling in particular on minorities and dissidents.
- [Somalia](https://endtorture.org/projects/protection-against/somalia/): The only country in this project where an individual can still complain to a United Nations body, through the Optional Protocol Somalia joined in 1990. The Committee against Torture recorded mistreatment of suspects during interrogation, and life-threatening conditions in prisons run by Al-Shabaab.
- [Iran](https://endtorture.org/projects/protection-against/iran/): Not a party to the Convention against Torture, and never a signatory, so no complaint about Iran can reach any international body. A United Nations fact-finding mission has found torture in Iran committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack amounting to crimes against humanity.
- [Egypt](https://endtorture.org/projects/protection-against/egypt/): Twice the subject of a confidential inquiry by the Committee against Torture, the only procedure open against it. Two international bodies have separately held that removing a man to Egypt on Egyptian diplomatic assurances breached the prohibition on return.
- [Germany](https://endtorture.org/projects/where-the-prohibition-is-being-broken/germany/): The Committee against Torture has found Germany in violation of article 3, and a German court has called a completed deportation manifestly unlawful and unconstitutional, carried out while a torture-based prohibition on removal was in force.
- [What each state accepted under the Convention](https://endtorture.org/convention-against-torture/): The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment was adopted in 1984 and entered into force on 26 June 1987. It now has 176 States parties. This page sets out what it prohibits, and what four states have actually accepted under it. What the Convention prohibits The Convention draws a line between two things. Designations on this site say which of the two they rest on, because a state should not be able to answer a finding of ill-treatment by denying torture. Article 1(1), torture. “For the purposes of this Convention, the term ‘torture’ means any…
- [Refoulement](https://endtorture.org/refoulement/): No state may send a person to a place where they face torture. There is no exception for what the person has done, and no exception for who they are. What the Convention says Article 3(1). “No State Party shall expel, return (‘refouler’) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” Article 3(2). “For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a…
- [Dominican Republic](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/dominican-republic/): Basis: the Dominican Government’s own communiqué of 12 May 2026 and the foreign ministry’s statement of the following day, both read in Spanish; the depositary record and the Committee against Torture’s own agenda papers; the United Nations refugee agency’s published procedure and its decision figures; and a monitoring project’s account of an instrument neither government has published. No one has been sent. The designation rests on what the receiving state has said in advance about what will happen to anyone who is. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 13 May 2026, in its own words Transferred people “will not enter the Dominican…
- [The Bahamas](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/the-bahamas/): No designation Refused, and no instrument established The Bahamas This page carries no Alert. The Coalition designates a state when it has agreed to receive people removed from the United States. The Bahamas is in this series because it was named as a candidate, not because an agreement has been shown to exist. Its documented position is refusal, stated by the Office of the Prime Minister and never publicly reversed. The Coalition will not designate a state on the strength of a description it cannot corroborate, and says so here rather than leaving the reader to infer it. The Office of…
- [Grenada](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/grenada/): Basis: the Prime Minister of Grenada’s own account of the instrument, given on the record six days before he signed it; the depositary record, in which Grenada appears in neither refugee treaty; the United States Department of State’s own human rights report on Grenada; and the United Nations treaty body record. No one has been sent to Grenada. Two hundred and twenty-four days have passed since signature with no transfer recorded. The designation is not about what has happened to anyone. It is that a state agreed to receive people before the terms on which it would hold them had been…
- [Antigua and Barbuda](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/antigua-and-barbuda/): Basis: the Government of Antigua and Barbuda’s own White Paper of 9 July 2026, the resolution its Parliament passed on 14 July 2026, the United States proclamation published on the day the memorandum was signed, and the depositary record. Nobody has been transferred here, and the reason is on the record: Parliament set conditions that have not been met. The designation rests on what the Government itself says would happen to a person who did arrive. The Government’s own White Paper, 9 July 2026 A transferred person, it says, would “arrive in a legal grey zone”, being “simultaneously a potential asylum…
- [Jamaica](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/jamaica/): Basis: the depositary record of the treaties Jamaica has and has not joined, Jamaica’s own report to the Human Rights Council, the Jamaica Information Service’s account of the arrangement, the Human Rights Committee’s findings of 2016, and the refugee agency’s own mapping of Jamaican law. No one has yet been transferred to Jamaica. The designation is not for anything done to a transferred person. It is that Jamaica has agreed to receive people while standing outside the Convention against Torture entirely, having closed the only other United Nations complaint route available to them, and while describing an asylum procedure that does…
- [Guyana](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/guyana/): Basis: the Government of Guyana’s own statement of 5 September 2026, the United Nations compilation prepared for Guyana’s review in 2025, the depositary record, Guyana’s Immigration Act, and the position of the agency the Government says protection claims will be referred to. Nothing establishes that any of the six people who arrived on 4 September has been mistreated. The designation is that they were sent under an assurance against refoulement to a state whose own United Nations review, sixteen months earlier, recorded that it has no law recognising that principle. The disclosed diplomatic note, as described by the monitoring project The…
- [Dominica](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/dominica/): Basis: the Prime Minister’s own public account of what happened, the depositary record of what this state has accepted, the United States Department of State’s own description of the Dominican asylum system, and the way the instrument has been published. Nothing establishes that any of the five people sent here was mistreated, and the Government refused the first list it was offered. The designation is that people were chosen from a list by a state with no asylum procedure, housed at the sending state’s expense, moved on within weeks, and that had anything gone wrong there is no international body any…
- [Saint Lucia](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/saint-lucia/): What a person who is not a national finds after being transferred to Saint Lucia by the United States: six people received in the week of 31 August 2026 from ten proposed, in a country that is party to neither refugee treaty, has no asylum procedure, and accepted the duty to report under the Convention against Torture while switching off every other mechanism in it.
- [Saint Kitts and Nevis](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/saint-kitts-and-nevis/): What a person who is not a national finds after being transferred to Saint Kitts and Nevis by the United States: three people admitted in May 2026 under the ordinary right of entry that Caribbean Community nationals already hold, and behind that right no refugee law, no asylum procedure, no appeal against refusal of entry, and no international body an individual could petition.
- [Paraguay](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/paraguay/): What a person who is not Paraguayan finds after being transferred there by the United States: no detention, a hotel in central Asuncion at United States expense, a stay of between three days and a fortnight, and then, in most recorded cases, a flight home. Not one of the seventy seven people sent had entered the asylum procedure.
- [Ecuador](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/ecuador/): What a person who is not Ecuadorian finds after being transferred there by the United States: a real and long established asylum system, an agreement published only as unreadable page images, an application route that exists only online, and no account from anyone of what happens after a transfer flight lands.
- [Belize](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/belize/): What a person who is not Belizean finds after being transferred there by the United States: a country the Committee against Torture has examined once, in 1993, whose next report arrived twenty-eight years late and has still not been taken up, an Optional Protocol ratified with no mechanism built under it, and an agreement the Senate sent to committee with no record of what happened next.
- [Honduras](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/honduras/): What a person who is not Honduran finds after being transferred there by the United States: an agreement published as unreadable images, a government that calls its own country a stopping point on the way to Mexico, and an asylum system in which more than three quarters of cases are closed because the applicant has gone.
- [Mexico](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/mexico/): More people who are not its nationals have been removed here from the United States than to every other receiving state combined. Nobody is screened on arrival. People are bussed two to three days to the far south, past the thirty-six hour limit Mexico's own Supreme Court set. For Central Americans the stop is not the end.
- [Costa Rica](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/costa-rica/): Two hundred people, including seventy-nine children, were flown here in February 2025 and held for sixty-two days. Costa Rica's own Constitutional Chamber found the detention unlawful, arbitrary and without any legal basis, ordered their release and damages, and had to repeat the order in October under threat of discipline.
- [Panama](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/panama/): 299 people were flown here in February 2025 and held in a hotel they could not leave, without their telephones, with lawyers turned away at the door and calls home offered only in exchange for agreeing to be repatriated. What ended it was a filing in Washington. What it ended in was a thirty day permit that ends in deportation.
- [Guatemala](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/guatemala/): Every protection guarantee the 2019 agreement contained has been removed from the four hundred word agreement now in force. The president says there is no stay and no refuge because people are in transit, sent on within a day. The last United Nations body to see the airport these flights land at found that lawyers are not allowed in.
- [El Salvador](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/el-salvador/): The United States flew 252 men here in March 2025 and they were taken to CECOT. El Salvador told the United Nations that legal responsibility lay with the sending state; a United States court found the two governments had behaved as principal and agent. No one held in El Salvador can complain to the Committee against Torture, and no international body may inspect its prisons.
- [Australia](https://endtorture.org/projects/where-the-prohibition-is-being-broken/australia/): The Committee against Torture found in November 2025 that Australia was responsible for what happened to a man it detained on Manus Island, adopting the Australian Senate's own finding that the government failed in its duty to protect him. Australia argued the people it sends offshore are not its responsibility.
- [United Kingdom](https://endtorture.org/projects/where-the-prohibition-is-being-broken/united-kingdom/): The Supreme Court found substantial grounds to believe people sent to Rwanda faced a real risk of return to the countries they had fled. Parliament answered by forbidding every court to ask that question, then repealed the Act without anyone having been removed by force.
- [Italy](https://endtorture.org/projects/where-the-prohibition-is-being-broken/italy/): A United Nations treaty body told Italy in April 2026 to immediately cease the practice of pushbacks. Italy has built the decisive parts of its border control in places its own courts and Europe's do not reliably reach, and told the Human Rights Council it was in full compliance while declining to accept the recommendation that said otherwise.
- [United States](https://endtorture.org/projects/where-the-prohibition-is-being-broken/united-states/): The state that sends people. Three federal courts have found the programme punitive, and the United States accepted the state-to-state complaint procedure under the Convention against Torture while declining the one that lets an individual complain.
- [States Engaging in Refoulement](https://endtorture.org/projects/where-the-prohibition-is-being-broken/): States documented breaching the prohibition on return through their own conduct rather than by receiving people others sent: sending people into danger, pushing them back at a border, or removing them in disregard of the prohibition. Judged by exactly the same test as every other state on this site.
- [Palau](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/palau/): Palau agreed on Christmas Eve 2025 to take up to seventy-five people from the United States, for a reported seven and a half million dollars. Three have arrived and one has already left. Palau signed the Convention against Torture in 2011 and never ratified it, is party to neither refugee instrument, and has no asylum law at all, so there is no international body a person here can petition. The only forum that can order anything is Palau’s own Supreme Court, and it works.
- [Uzbekistan](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/uzbekistan/): Most of what has been flown here from the United States is Uzbekistan collecting its own citizens, and this page says so first. The third-country record is six people recorded as arriving on 10 March 2026, with no nationalities, no source and no trace. A person who is not an Uzbek national has no complaint to the Committee against Torture here, no mechanism that can visit them, and one international route that takes years.
- [Poland](https://endtorture.org/projects/where-the-prohibition-is-being-broken/poland/): Six final judgments of the European Court of Human Rights hold that Polish border guards turned away people who came to ask for protection, as part of a policy the Court found to exist, and that Poland went on doing it after being ordered to stop. Two further judgments concern a CIA site at Stare Kiejkuty. This page also records the United States transfers that pass through Poland, on which nothing has yet been decided.
- [Moldova](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/moldova/): At least sixteen people were flown here from the United States in March 2026, with further transfers since, under no published agreement and after the Prime Minister had said publicly that Moldova would take back its own citizens and not other nationalities. Everyone arrives with ninety days and no status. Moldova is also one of the few states in this record where a person can still reach a court outside it.
- [Kosovo](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/kosovo/): One person, or two, were sent here from the United States in December 2025, under an arrangement whose own stated purpose is to help them return to the country they left. Kosovo is a party to no human rights convention at all, and in November 2024 the Committee against Torture decided that sending a man here would expose him to a real risk of being moved on to Türkiye and tortured there.
- [What a receiving state agrees to](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/what-a-receiving-state-agrees-to/): The Coalition’s position, stated in its own voice. Every state that agreed to receive people who are not its nationals, moved against their will, under this programme has knowingly facilitated it, and the wrong is complete at the moment of agreement.
- [Sources](https://endtorture.org/projects/punitive-third-country-removals/sources/): Every document this project relies on, with a route to the full text.
- [What the government has said](https://endtorture.org/projects/punitive-third-country-removals/what-the-government-has-said/): Statements by the United States, in its own policy, in public and in court, as courts have recorded them.
- [What the courts have done](https://endtorture.org/projects/punitive-third-country-removals/what-the-courts-have-done/): Ten cases in eleven decisions on whether third-country removal is being used as punishment, including the five refusals, and what separates them.
- [What the law forbids](https://endtorture.org/projects/punitive-third-country-removals/what-the-law-forbids/): An account of the rules that bear on this subject, in the words of the instruments and decisions themselves.
- [What has been waiting on arrival](https://endtorture.org/projects/punitive-third-country-removals/what-has-been-waiting-on-arrival/): Imprisonment, incommunicado detention, solitary confinement and onward transfer, and what one judge concluded about the pattern.
- [How a removal is carried out](https://endtorture.org/projects/punitive-third-country-removals/how-a-removal-is-carried-out/): What happens between the cell in the United States and the ground in another country, taken from filed court records.
- [Start here](https://endtorture.org/projects/punitive-third-country-removals/start-here/): The distinction the whole project turns on, why it is hard to see, who it is being done to, and what a reader should take from the rest.
- [Punitive Third-Country Removals](https://endtorture.org/projects/punitive-third-country-removals/): A third-country removal can be lawful. This project is about what has been added to it: how people are moved, what has been waiting for them on arrival, and what United States courts have done when they were shown the answer.
- [The words this site uses](https://endtorture.org/terminology/): Every term below is used on this site in one settled sense. Where the Coalition refuses a word, this page says which word and why. Where a term has a legal definition, the definition is the one given here, and nothing on the site stretches it. One rule governs the whole page. The Coalition chooses its own words. It does not choose anyone else’s. Where a court, a government, a United Nations body or a news organisation used a word, the quotation keeps that word exactly, including words this site otherwise refuses. Changing a quotation to match the Coalition’s terminology would…
- [Cameroon](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/cameroon/): The State Department found Cameroon’s assurances credible on 7 January 2026. Thirteen months earlier the Committee against Torture had found that Cameroon collectively expels asylum seekers in violation of non-refoulement.
- [South Sudan](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/south-sudan/): Eight men were flown here in July 2025 after six weeks on a United States military base in Djibouti. A federal judge found the removal violated his injunction. Ten months later Amnesty International found four of them arbitrarily detained in an undisclosed location.
- [Sierra Leone](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/sierra-leone/): Thirty-one people were flown here across three flights in 2026 and handed a briefing pamphlet calling the country a temporary transit location where no long-term settlement is permitted. This page sets out the arrangement, the record, and what is not established.
- [Burundi](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/burundi/): The United States holds an uncapped, unmonitored authority to transfer people to Burundi. No arrival has been confirmed. The Committee against Torture has said the violations it documented in Burundi could constitute crimes against humanity.
- [Democratic Republic of the Congo](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/democratic-republic-of-the-congo/): Fifteen people were flown to Kinshasa on 17 April 2026 and more than half were back in their own countries within seven weeks. The arrangement behind the flight has never been produced by either government.
- [Central African Republic](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/central-african-republic/): At least three flights have arrived here since June 2026, carrying people who held United States court-ordered protections. The Committee against Torture has never examined this state, and the detention system those transferred entered is documented by the United Nations itself.
- [Cabo Verde](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/cabo-verde/): A binding agreement in force since November 2025 provides for the transfer of asylum seekers to Cabo Verde. No transfer has occurred, and the safeguard in the agreement depends on a protection determination Cabo Verde has no procedure to make.
- [Uganda](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/uganda/): Eight people were flown here in April 2026 under an asylum cooperative agreement published in the Federal Register. The Committee against Torture examined Uganda in 2022 and found torture widespread, unauthorised places of detention still in use, and no information on diplomatic assurances or their monitoring.
- [Rwanda](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/rwanda/): Seven people were transferred here in August 2025 and the only account of what happened to them is the receiving government’s. The memorandum behind the transfers states in its own text that it creates nothing.
- [Liberia](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/liberia/): Twenty people were flown here on 20 August 2026, and five or six refused to leave the plane, which flew on to Equatorial Guinea. The agreement behind the flight is binding, and its protection clause is narrower than it appears.
- [What an Alert means](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/what-an-alert-means/): An Alert marks a state from which a risk arises to people moved under a third-country removal arrangement, where a reliable, identified source reports that risk. It attaches to any state that produces the risk, whether that state receives people, moves them across its territory, or sends them. It is a warning, not a verdict. It records what has been reported, names the source behind every trigger, and says plainly whether any authority has yet ruled on it. This page sets out the test, so that any reader, including a government that carries a designation, can check whether it has been…
- [Equatorial Guinea](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/equatorial-guinea/): Basis: findings of torture and arbitrary detention by United Nations bodies, and the documented return of people holding United States protection to the countries they were protected from. Equatorial Guinea is the first receiving state on this site to meet both grounds. Government of Equatorial Guinea · Note Verbale · 2 October 2025 In the written assurance the United States accepted, Equatorial Guinea promised that people transferred to it would not face persecution or torture “in Equatorial Guinea or in any other country to which the Government of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea may subsequently transfer them.” The first twenty-nine were…
- [Ghana](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/ghana/): At least one hundred people have been transferred here from the United States since September 2025, and most have been removed onward within hours or days, several of them to the countries a United States immigration judge had found them at risk in. This page sets out what is known, and what exists in Ghana for a person who arrives under the arrangement.
- [What the law requires](https://endtorture.org/projects/diplomatic-assurances/what-the-law-requires/): The treaty article, the statute, and the two regulations, quoted as the courts have quoted them, with the three silences that produced the litigation.
- [What the courts have held](https://endtorture.org/projects/diplomatic-assurances/what-the-courts-have-held/): Four decisions, read in the courts' own words, and the rule they produce: what review is available turns on the door the person came through rather than on the danger he faces.
- [What is disputed](https://endtorture.org/projects/diplomatic-assurances/what-is-disputed/): The strongest case for allowing assurances and the strongest case against, each attributed to the writer making it, and the conditions both sides agree any credible practice would have to meet.
- [Sources](https://endtorture.org/projects/diplomatic-assurances/assurances-sources/): Every source this project relies on, with a link to each, and a statement of what is missing from the list.
- [What an assurance is](https://endtorture.org/projects/diplomatic-assurances/what-an-assurance-is/): Where assurances are used, what the immigration sequence looks like step by step, and what an assurance does not do.
- [Diplomatic Assurances](https://endtorture.org/projects/diplomatic-assurances/): A promise by one government to another that a particular person will not be tortured after he is handed over. What the law requires before one may be relied on, what the courts have held, and why serious people disagree about whether the practice can be made safe.
- [Court Decisions](https://endtorture.org/projects/court-decisions/): The register organized by the question each court answered rather than by date, so a reader looking for the law on one point can find every decision on it, including the ones that came out the other way.
- [Transit and Temporary Recipients](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/): States that agreed to take, or have taken, people removed from the United States who are not their nationals. What a person actually finds on arrival: whether transfers there are established, whether people were detained, what status they were given and for how long, whether anyone has been removed onward, and who can be reached inside the country.
- [Accessibility](https://endtorture.org/accessibility/): The standard this site is built toward, what has been done, what has not been tested, and how to report a barrier.
- [For government officials](https://endtorture.org/for-officials/): What the obligation is, where it comes from, and what a careful record does for the official who keeps it.
- [For journalists](https://endtorture.org/for-journalists/): The documented record with its sources, what is established and what is not, and what the Coalition will not claim.
- [For faith, community and nonprofit organizations](https://endtorture.org/for-organizations/): What a congregation or a small organization is actually able to do, and who else is already working on this.
- [For lawyers and advocates](https://endtorture.org/for-lawyers/): The register of decided orders, what the courts have required, and the country material behind a fear-based claim.
- [Your relative or friend has been removed](https://endtorture.org/someone-you-know/): How to find where a person has been taken, how to get a message to them, and what a family can do from outside.
- [You were sent to a country that is not your own](https://endtorture.org/you-were-removed/): What is known about these transfers, how to find the country you are in, and the question that decides everything else.
- [Eswatini](https://endtorture.org/projects/country-guides/eswatini/): Thirty people have been transferred here from the United States since July 2025 and held at a high security prison without charge. This page sets out what is known about the arrangement, and what exists in the country for a person who arrives under it.
- [The Countries](https://endtorture.org/projects/third-country-removals/the-countries/): A profile of every state recorded as receiving third-country removals from the United States since January 2025, with its human rights record linked and the reported treatment of transferred persons.
- [Where to Find Help](https://endtorture.org/projects/third-country-removals/where-to-find-help/): The Coalition does not represent individuals. These are organisations that do, and the international bodies that receive complaints.
- [Sources](https://endtorture.org/projects/third-country-removals/sources/): Every statute, regulation, treaty provision, decided case, report and instrument this project relies on, with a link to each where one is available.
- [The Law](https://endtorture.org/projects/third-country-removals/the-law/): The rules governing removal of a protected person to a third country, as the statutes, regulations, treaties and decided cases state them, in nine parts, ending with what no court has decided.
- [The Record](https://endtorture.org/projects/third-country-removals/the-record/): Named people and identified cohorts whose treatment after transfer to a third country is a matter of public record, with the source for each.
- [Elsewhere](https://endtorture.org/projects/third-country-removals/elsewhere/): The United Kingdom and Australia have run comparable third-country schemes, and their highest courts have ruled on them. What those courts decided, and what the legislatures did next.
- [Start Here](https://endtorture.org/projects/third-country-removals/start-here/): What protection under the Convention Against Torture covers, what it does not, and why the time before a transfer matters more than anything after it.
- [Third-Country Removals](https://endtorture.org/projects/third-country-removals/): The removal of people who hold protection under the Convention Against Torture to countries other than their own: what the law permits, what it prohibits, what the record shows, and where the sources are.
- [Projects](https://endtorture.org/projects/): Each project is a reference on one subject: the law as the statutes, treaties and decided cases state it, the public record, and the sources behind both. Reporting on each subject appears under News and links back here.
- [Third-Country Removals](https://endtorture.org/third-country-removals/)
- [Terms of Use](https://endtorture.org/terms-of-use/)
- [News](https://endtorture.org/news/)
- [Contact](https://endtorture.org/contact/)
- [Resources](https://endtorture.org/resources/)
- [What We Do](https://endtorture.org/what-we-do/)
- [About](https://endtorture.org/about/)

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