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.
What the record showsA receiving stateAs of September 11, 2026
Arrangement reported
Yes
Transfers reported
Yes
People with protection among them
Investigating
Onward return reported
Investigating
These are statements about the public record, not about the country. "Investigating" means the Coalition has not located a report or a decision on that point and is still looking. It is not a finding that the thing did not happen.
Ecuador: key facts
Each fact links to the document it is taken from. The full account follows below.
Who was sent, and how many. About 121 people were transferred to Ecuador from mid-January 2026 through June 2026, on a count the monitoring project itself qualifies as “reportedly”: 66 Venezuelan, 30 Cuban, 11 Honduran, 9 Colombian and smaller numbers from six other countries. Between August 2025 and August 2026, on immigration court data analysed by Mobile Pathways, 19,624 people received orders naming Ecuador as a removal destination; the project’s overview gives the same count as 19,264, and the difference is unresolved. Sources: Third Country Deportation Watch, Ecuador, consulted 5 November 2026 · Third Country Deportation Watch, overview, consulted 5 November 2026
Arrival. All United States removal flights to Ecuador land at Guayaquil. The only published account of reception says people are “reportedly brought to a shelter where food and accommodations are provided by the UNHCR”; who meets them, whether anyone is held, and for how long are not documented. Source: Third Country Deportation Watch, Ecuador, updated 10 September 2026
Claiming asylum. Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry states that the asylum procedure “se realiza en línea” (is done online) and lists one mandatory requirement, “Contar con un e-mail personal” (having a personal email account); a zonal directorate then makes contact by email. No route for claiming at the airport is documented. Source: Gobierno del Ecuador, determinación de la condición de refugiado o apátrida
What the Committee against Torture found. In concluding observations adopted on 22 July 2024, the Committee noted “with concern the serious shortcomings in the State party’s prison system” and asked Ecuador to prioritize “the demilitarization of prison control”. They predate the agreement by a year, and no international body has examined the transfers. Source: CAT/C/ECU/CO/8, paragraphs 15 and 16
The state’s own record. Human Rights Watch counts 28 executive decrees declaring, renewing or modifying states of emergency between January 2024 and June 2026, which “loosened human rights constraints on the government’s fight against crime”, and more than 500 detainees killed in prisons since 2021. Amnesty International documented the enforced disappearance of ten people in five security operations in 2024, attributed to the armed forces; none of this has been documented as touching a transferred person. Sources: Human Rights Watch, A Dangerous Partnership, 21 July 2026 · Human Rights Watch, World Report 2026, Ecuador · Amnesty International, March 2026
A complaint to the Committee against Torture is possible. On 6 September 1988 Ecuador recognized the Committee against Torture’s competence “to receive and consider communications from or on behalf of individuals subject to its jurisdiction”, and it accepts the contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court, so a person in Ecuador can petition both once domestic remedies are exhausted. Sources: UN Treaty Collection, Convention against Torture · Inter-American Court, states accepting jurisdiction
Ecuadorians sent elsewhere. On 8 September 2026 Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry reported that 48 Ecuadorians had been sent by the United States to five other countries, 35 of them to Paraguay, and that when transferred they “no habían expresado su voluntad de regresar a Ecuador” (had not expressed willingness to return to Ecuador). It said 36 of the 48 have since returned to Ecuador. Ecuadorians were later reported among the 22 people the United States sent to Jamaica on 13 October 2026: the Jamaica Gleaner, citing Jamaica’s Minister of National Security, Horace Chang, described the group as “15 men and seven women from Ecuador and a European country”, while the Jamaica Observer, citing the Jamaican government’s joint update, reported that it “represents seven nationalities”. The number of Ecuadorians was not given, and the two accounts conflict. Sources: Radio Pichincha, 8 September 2026 (Foreign Ministry figures) · Jamaica Gleaner (Karen Madden), 14 October 2026 · Jamaica Observer, 14 October 2026
AlertEmergency rule and no documented receptionEcuador
Basis: the United States Federal Register notice publishing the agreement, the Ecuadorian government’s own published procedure for claiming asylum, the monitoring project that counts the transfers, and findings of the Committee against Torture, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International about conditions in Ecuador. Nothing establishes that any person transferred to Ecuador has been mistreated there. What the Coalition records is that the agreement was published late and, in the Federal Register, as images, that the only route into the asylum procedure the government documents is an online form, and that no authoritative body has published anything at all about what becomes of the people sent.
The agreement, published in a form that cannot be read
The exchange of notes of 16 and 23 July 2025 was printed in the United States Federal Register at 90 Federal Register 51376 as graphic images across pages 51377 to 51386; the State Department has since published the notes as TIAS 25-723.1. The Register itself says so. The State Department has since published the notes in its treaty series as TIAS 25-723.1. They contain an undertaking not to return a person home while a protection claim is pending and say nothing about a third country; but in further notes of 7 and 21 May 2026 Ecuador said it intends to process transfers “to their country of origin, residence, or other destination”, and assured the United States that people “would not be … further transferred to any country in which they would be subjected to persecution … or torture”.
The Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry’s own published procedure
An asylum claim in Ecuador is lodged online only. The government’s service record gives the channel as a web portal, after which a zonal directorate makes contact by email. There is no documented airport or port of entry route. A person put off a flight at Guayaquil with no device, no address and no Ecuadorian email account faces that as the only documented way in.
What is known about arrival, and how thinly it is known
The single passage anywhere describing reception says people are “reportedly” taken to a shelter and “reportedly” allowed to stay while claims are processed. It carries no footnote and no source, and the Coalition could not corroborate it from any refugee agency document. Who meets people, whether anyone is held, for how long and under what authority are all unestablished.
The country, on the record of bodies that have examined it
Human Rights Watch counts 28 executive decrees declaring, renewing or modifying states of emergency between January 2024 and June 2026. The military has run prisons since 2024. More than 500 people have been killed inside them since 2021. Amnesty International has documented ten enforced disappearances by the armed forces. None of that has been documented as touching a transferred person, and this page does not claim it has.
What an Alert meansDesignated September 11, 2026Review: on any first-hand account of what happens to a person after a transfer flight lands at Guayaquil
The Coalition’s position. This state agreed to receive people who are not its nationals, moved against their will, under a programme United States federal courts have found punitive and whose purpose was stated publicly before the agreement was made. On the Coalition’s position it has knowingly facilitated that programme, and the wrong is complete at the moment of agreement. Nothing on this page is offered as mitigation. What a country agrees to when people are forcibly sent to it.
What has happened
Ecuador is on both sides of this. It agreed to receive people the United States wanted to remove, and in the same period the United States removed 48 Ecuadorians to five other countries. This page deals with the first and returns to the second at the end, because the two together say more about the practice than either says alone.
Arrangement. Not a signed treaty. An exchange of diplomatic notes, a United States note of 16 July 2025 and an Ecuadorian reply of 23 July 2025, in force on the date of the reply. Published four months later, on 17 November 2025, at 90 Federal Register 51376. The Federal Register printed the notes as page images; the State Department has since published them as TIAS 25-723.1, and released a further exchange of notes of 7 and 21 May 2026, which constitute, in their own words, “a non-binding understanding” effective on 21 May 2026, in its June 2026 folder; Third Country Deportation Watch says this second agreement was “made public in August 2026”. Sources: State Department release, June 2026 (file 2026-0040QN) · Berkeley Reading Room, 2026 text · Third Country Deportation Watch, Ecuador, consulted 5 November 2026
Transferred. About 121 people through June 2026, on the monitoring project’s count, which is hedged in its own text. Recorded nationalities: 66 Venezuelan, 30 Cuban, 11 Honduran, 9 Colombian, and smaller numbers from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia and Peru. Flights are recorded as arriving at Guayaquil. The number of flights is still being investigated.
Capacity. Reported as an initial ceiling of up to 300 people a year. The figure comes from press reporting, not from the instrument.
Onward removal. Investigating. No source found showing that anyone transferred to Ecuador has been moved on, and none showing that they have not.
What cannot be read, and why that matters
The agreement was published. The Federal Register version is page images, but the State Department’s version in its treaty series, TIAS 25-723.1, can be read and searched. The Federal Register’s own notice records that the diplomatic correspondence is presented as graphic images within the document, and a structural query of the official print returns the same answer: image only, no text layer. The Federal Register version cannot easily be searched or quoted; the State Department’s treaty series text can.
The contents can now be read in the State Department’s text, TIAS 25-723.1, and match the account a research center had given. On that account the accord covers the transfer of third country nationals who sought protection in the United States against return to their home country or country of former habitual residence; it excludes unaccompanied children; and Ecuador undertook not to return a person to their home country or country of former habitual residence until a final decision has been made on any pending protection claim.
Read carefully, that undertaking is about timing. It says a person will not be sent home while a claim is pending. It is not a prohibition on sending them home once the claim is over, and it says nothing at all about removal to some third country. The Coalition states the distinction because the difference between the two is the whole of the protection. The State Department’s published text confirms the wording: Ecuador “agrees not to return any person transferred to Ecuador … to their home country or country of former habitual residence until a final decision has been made regarding any pending protection claims”.
Reception, detention, legal representation, interpretation and monitoring are not addressed in either exchange of notes; on funding, the May 2026 notes say only that the United States “intends to review foreign assistance funds that might be available to recognize the cooperation of the Government of Ecuador”. No source the Coalition could open reports any such provision either way.
The count, and what it rests on
About 121 people through June 2026 is the best figure available, and it should be read with its provenance attached rather than treated as an established count. The monitoring project that publishes it hedges it in its own sentence, and the source it cites for the figure is a video posted to a social media page by a local radio station. A second tracker confirms that monthly transfers have been occurring since January 2026 and, in its versions updated September and October 2026, gives the same figure of 121, linked to the same video; it gives no flight count and no breakdown. An Ecuadorian outlet reporting in September 2026 says more than a hundred people have been transferred, in an article headlined on the premise that Ecuador is only beginning to receive them, and that outlet misdescribes a United States official’s post in the same piece. Source: United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, tracker, updated October 2026
Set against the transfers is a much larger number. Between August 2025 and August 2026, on immigration court data analysed by Mobile Pathways as the monitoring project reports it, 19,624 people received orders naming Ecuador as a removal destination, against roughly 121 who were actually moved through June 2026. The project’s overview gives 19,264 for the same count; its five country figures add up to its stated total of 32,422 only with 19,624. The difference is unresolved. When consulted on 27 October 2026, the project gave 18,552 for December 2025 to June 2026. The gap between what has been ordered and what has happened is the measure of what this arrangement could become. Sources: Third Country Deportation Watch, Ecuador, consulted 5 November 2026 · Third Country Deportation Watch, overview, consulted 5 November 2026
The asylum system a person is placed into
This is the part of the Ecuadorian picture that is genuinely strong, and the Coalition states it first. Ecuador recognised 81,673 refugees as of May 2026, on the refugee agency’s own national figures, some 93 per cent of them Colombian. That is the largest recognised refugee population in Latin America, built over two decades. Ecuador is not a country without an asylum system. It is a country with one of the region’s oldest.
The difficulty is the door. The authority is the Directorate of International Protection at the Foreign Ministry. Its published service record states that the procedure is conducted online, through a web portal, after which one of four zonal directorates makes contact by email. The procedure is free of charge. Time limits follow the human mobility statute and vary with the complexity of the case.
There is no documented mechanism for lodging a claim at an airport or at a port of entry. For an Ecuadorian resident or a person already settled in the country that is an administrative convenience. For someone who has just been put off a deportation flight at Guayaquil, without a telephone, an email account, an address for correspondence or, in many cases, Spanish, an online only procedure is close to unusable. The Coalition records this as the single most consequential practical finding on the page, and it is a finding about design rather than about ill will.
The country a person arrives in
Two things are true at once here and the page keeps them apart. The general human rights record of Ecuador in this period is heavily documented. Nothing in it has been documented as touching a person transferred from the United States.
Human Rights Watch counts 28 executive decrees declaring, renewing or modifying states of emergency between January 2024 and June 2026, which, in its words, loosened human rights constraints on the government’s fight against crime. It documented abuses by security forces after the declaration of an internal armed conflict in January 2024, including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests and ill treatment of detainees that in some cases may have amounted to torture. The military was deployed to patrol cities and assumed control of prisons nationwide; as of August 2025 soldiers reportedly remained in 11 of the country’s 34 facilities. More than 500 detainees have been killed in violent confrontations inside prisons since 2021.
Amnesty International, in March 2026, published a study documenting ten enforced disappearances across five security operations in 2024, attributing them to the armed forces, and recommended that Ecuador reverse the militarised approach to public security that it says facilitated serious violations.
The Committee against Torture examined Ecuador at its eightieth session in July 2024. On the record of that session it found serious shortcomings in the prison system, in the treatment of people deprived of their liberty and in the management of prisons, citing self governance by inmates, extortion, staff shortages, corruption and the smuggling of weapons and drugs, and it recommended a comprehensive plan addressing the crisis and its systemic causes, including the demilitarisation of prisons and independent investigation of deaths in custody.
A distinction this page insists onDuring the dialogue of 16 July 2024 a country rapporteur said there were reports of violations of the principle of non-refoulement by Ecuador through extraditions of migrants, and described more than 680 deaths from prison violence between 2018 and 2023 and allegations of broken bones, food tainted with urine and sexual abuse by officials of the armed forces. Those are statements made by individual Committee members during a dialogue. They are allegations and questions, not findings of the Committee, and the Coalition labels them that way rather than promoting them.
The most recent concluding observations on Ecuador, adopted in July 2024, predate the exchange of notes by about a year. The Committee against Torture has never examined this arrangement. Nor, on the Coalition’s searching, has any other international body.
What routes exist
Ecuador has accepted the individual complaint procedure under the Convention against Torture. It ratified the Convention on 30 March 1988 and has made the declarations under both article 21 and article 22. That is not true of every state in this section, and it matters more than almost anything else on this page: a person in Ecuador can petition the Committee against Torture directly, once domestic remedies are exhausted.
Ecuador has also accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, since 24 July 1984, and ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture on 20 July 2010. A national preventive mechanism exists within the Ombudsman’s office. The Ombudsman holds A status from the global alliance of national human rights institutions, last reviewed in March 2022.
The Coalition could not open a single page of the Ombudsman’s website from its own tools. Every attempt failed at the robots file with a connection timeout. It therefore has no address, no telephone number and no email for the national human rights institution or for the preventive mechanism housed inside it, and it will not print a guessed one. The mechanism’s mandate, legal basis and date of designation are unverified for the same reason.
The first days
Nothing below is advice, and no page can tell a particular person what to do in their case.
What exists, in the order in which it usually matters
The claim is made online, and somebody will have to make it for you
The Foreign Ministry’s procedure runs through a web portal and a reply by email. A person arriving on a removal flight will in practice need someone with a device and an email address to lodge it. That is the first thing to arrange, before anything else.
The refugee agency does not take walk-ins
Ecuador’s refugee agency office provides in person assistance by prior appointment only, and directs people to a helpline number on a messaging application. Turning up at an office is not a route.
Three organisations do legal work and answer
HIAS Ecuador, INREDH and CEDHU all publish live contact details and all state a legal assistance mandate. Their details are below and each was checked on 11 September 2026.
The Committee against Torture is available here
Ecuador has accepted individual complaints under article 22. After domestic remedies, a complaint about torture or ill treatment can go to Geneva, as well as to the Inter-American system. Few states in this section offer both.
Who is reachable in Ecuador
Every entry below was checked on 11 September 2026 against the source named in it. Three further organisations appear in a standing referral directory for Ecuador that is dated May 2023: a Jesuit refugee and migrant service, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and a refugee committee in Quito that publishes no telephone, email or website at all. Three year old directory entries are not printed here as live contacts. They should be confirmed by telephone before anyone relies on them.
Official bodies
The authority that decides refugee and statelessness claims. Applications are lodged online only, through the government service portal, after which a zonal directorate makes contact by email. The procedure is free of charge
Dirección de Protección Internacional, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores y Movilidad Humana
The national human rights institution, holding A status since March 2022, and the body housing the national mechanism for the prevention of torture. The Coalition could not open any page of its website and therefore publishes no contact details rather than guessing them
On 8 September 2026 Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry gave a public account of its own nationals sent by the United States to countries not their own: 48 Ecuadorians, to five states. Thirty five went to Paraguay, six to Panama, three to Costa Rica, three to the Congo and one to the Central African Republic. The Ministry stated that all were adults, that all were in irregular migration status in the United States, and that at the time of transfer they had not expressed willingness to return to Ecuador. It confirmed that 36 of the 48 have since returned to Ecuador.
Ecuadorians have since been reported in a sixth country. On 13 October 2026 the United States sent 22 people to Jamaica, the first group under that country’s arrangement. The Jamaica Gleaner, citing Jamaica’s Minister of National Security, Horace Chang, reported a group of “15 men and seven women from Ecuador and a European country”, and its second report of the arrival gives the same two origins. The Jamaica Observer, citing the joint update of Jamaica’s national security and foreign affairs ministries, reported that the group “represents seven nationalities”, mostly from Latin America, and on 15 October quoted Chang describing it as “representing seven nationalities”. Caribbean National Weekly reported on 28 October 2026 that “The group included nationals of Latin American countries, including Ecuador and Honduras”, and on 29 October described “15 men and seven women from Ecuador and one European country”. None of these accounts gives the number of Ecuadorians. The descriptions conflict, and the matter is unresolved. Jamaica’s Foreign Minister, Kamina Johnson Smith, said on 27 October that one of the 22 had been returned home and another wished to remain in Jamaica, and on 28 October that nine had left the island, with the International Organization for Migration overseeing “arrangements for onward travel” for the rest. The report of the departures does not say where the nine went or whether any of them was Ecuadorian. Sources: Jamaica Gleaner (Karen Madden), 14 October 2026 · Jamaica Gleaner (Kimone Francis), 14 October 2026 · Jamaica Observer, 14 October 2026 · Jamaica Observer (Billeane Williams), 15 October 2026 · Jamaica Gleaner (Sashana Small), 27 October 2026 · Caribbean National Weekly, 28 October 2026 · Caribbean National Weekly, 29 October 2026
The Coalition sets that beside the arrangement on this page without drawing the two together into a single claim. A country can be one that people are sent to and one whose own people are being moved in the same way, in the same year, and Ecuador is both. The Ministry’s last sentence is worth holding onto: people who had not said they wanted to go home were sent somewhere else, and most of them then went home.
What runs the other way
Ecuador runs a large and long established refugee system. More than 81,000 recognised refugees is not a formality, and it is a genuine counterweight to any blanket description of the country as unsafe for people seeking protection.
The agreement’s published text contains a written undertaking, however limited, that a person will not be returned home while a protection claim is pending, and it excludes unaccompanied children. A ceiling was negotiated, reported at up to 300 people a year, which is a limit Ecuador placed on the arrangement rather than an open commitment.
Before the Committee against Torture, Ecuador said that international human rights law including the Mandela Rules was fully respected during states of emergency, that the armed forces were tasked only with ensuring the physical safety of prisons, and that states have authority under international norms to expel foreigners who are a threat to the nation. The Coalition records those as the state’s answers to the criticism against it, not as verified fact. A country rapporteur also noted that a ruling of Ecuador’s Constitutional Court had called into question whether the situation warranted a state of emergency, which indicates that a domestic judicial check on emergency powers is operating; the Coalition could not locate the ruling and does not cite it as authority.
And one negative finding cuts in Ecuador’s favour and must be stated. Human Rights Watch published a dedicated study of United States and Ecuadorian security cooperation in July 2026. It contains nothing about third country nationals deported from the United States to Ecuador, nothing about the transfer agreement, nothing about arrival conditions, detention on arrival or asylum access. The leading monitor of that relationship has not documented this programme. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and the Coalition treats it as neither.
Also a country people hold protection against
This page describes Ecuador as a transit or temporary recipient: a state that agreed to take, or has taken, people removed from the United States who are not its nationals. Ecuador also appears in a second project on this site, Countries Named in Protection Orders, because United States immigration judges protect people from being returned here: in fiscal year 2024 they granted asylum to 657 Ecuadorian nationals, on the immigration courts’ own figures. Sources: EOIR, asylum decisions by nationality, fiscal year 2024 · Coalition copy (PDF)
Those two facts sit together and are not in tension. A state can agree to receive people removed from somewhere else and at the same time be a state that other people cannot lawfully be sent back to. Nothing has been moved: this guide stays where it is.
Protection against return is granted to a person, not to a nationality. Nothing in this section says that people from this country are at risk as a class, and nothing in it should be filed as evidence in anyone’s individual case.
What is still being investigated
What the agreement says. The July 2025 notes, now readable as TIAS 25-723.1, bar return home only while a protection claim is pending and say nothing about a third country; the May 2026 notes contemplate transfer to an “other destination” with an assurance against transfer to persecution or torture.
Who meets people at Guayaquil, whether anyone is held, for how long, and under what authority. No source either way. The Coalition asserts neither.
Whether the shelter described in the one passage on arrival exists. Single sourced, unfootnoted and hedged twice in its own sentence. The Coalition could not corroborate it from any refugee agency document.
Whether any transferred person has in fact entered the Ecuadorian asylum procedure. Investigating.
Whether anyone transferred to Ecuador has been removed onward. Investigating.
The number of flights. No source gives one.
The Coalition writes Investigating where a question has been asked and not yet answered.
What this page does not yet carry
The rest of the Committee against Torture’s 2024 concluding observations on Ecuador. The key facts quote the full text, CAT/C/ECU/CO/8, at paragraphs 15 and 16; the account of the Committee’s session in the section on the country comes from its press release and the summary of the dialogue, and the page says so rather than passing them off as the observations themselves.
Any contact details for the Ombudsman or for the national mechanism for the prevention of torture.
The contents of the Inter-American Commission’s 2025 precautionary measures concerning disappeared persons during the state of emergency. The Coalition records that the resolution exists and does not publish contents it could not read.
A single first-hand account, from anyone, of what happens to a person after a transfer flight lands.
If you can correct anything on this page, the Coalition wants to hear it.
Sources
Every source relied on above, linked so it can be read in full rather than through this summary.
The agreement. Agreement between the United States and Ecuador relating to the transfer of third country nationals to Ecuador, constituted by notes of 16 and 23 July 2025, at 90 Federal Register 51376, published 17 November 2025, the notes carried as images at pages 51377 to 51386. The official print is at govinfo. For the only available account of the contents, Mixed Migration Centre, bilateral migration deals, which quotes the accord.
Numbers.Third Country Deportation Watch, Ecuador page, At a Glance last updated 27 October 2026 and background dated 4 September 2026, consulted 5 November 2026, for the count of about 121 and the nationality breakdown, and for the orders naming Ecuador, whose figure and period the background revised after 27 October 2026 without a change to its date; its overview page, consulted 5 November 2026, for the figure of 19,264. United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, third country deportations tracker, updated September and October 2026, which confirms monthly transfers since January 2026 and gives the same figure of 121, citing the same video.
The asylum system. Gobierno del Ecuador, determination of refugee or stateless status, for the online only procedure and the contact details. Refugee agency national displacement figures for 2026, reported 29 June 2026, for 81,673 recognised refugees as of May 2026.
Compiled 11 September 2026, updated 27 October and 5 November 2026. Where this page summarises a decision or a report, the full document is linked above and should be read in preference to this summary. Where a document could not be opened, this page says so rather than quoting it at second hand as though it had been read. Two claims were removed before publication: apparent verbatim quotations from the agreement, produced by an automated read of a document that has no text layer and therefore cannot have been read; and a statement that neither Ecuador nor Paraguay had accepted individual complaints under the Convention against Torture, which is false. Both have. Corrections to the Coalition.
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