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.
Jamaica: key facts
Each fact links to the document it is taken from. The full account follows below.
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. The designation was made on 11 September 2026, before anyone had been transferred; the first group of 22 people arrived on 13 October 2026. 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 not exist in its law.
Jamaica is not a party to the Convention against Torture. It does not appear in the depositary’s participants table at all, as signatory or as party, and its own report to the Human Rights Council says so. Of every state the Coalition has examined as a destination for these transfers, Jamaica is the only one outside the treaty altogether.
Sources: UN Treaty Collection, Convention against Torture · A/HRC/WG.6/50/JAM/1
Jamaica denounced the First Optional Protocol to the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on 23 October 1997, ending individual complaints to the Human Rights Committee. Combined with the absence of any Convention against Torture obligation, there is no United Nations individual complaint route of any kind. Jamaica ratified the American Convention in 1978 but never accepted the Inter-American Court, so what remains is the Inter-American Commission’s petition system, which produces reports that do not bind.
Sources: UN Treaty Collection, ICCPR First Optional Protocol · UN Treaty Collection, Convention against Torture · Inter-American Court, States parties and States accepting contentious jurisdiction
The Government’s published account of how a transferred person would seek protection is that persons who choose to stay “will have to apply to the courts for asylum”. No such procedure exists in Jamaican law. There is no asylum statute and no court-based asylum jurisdiction. Status determination rests on a policy instrument of 2009, adopted by the Government rather than enacted, and that document is published in a form with no text layer, so it cannot be read or quoted by anyone.
Sources: Jamaica Information Service, 18 June 2026 · UNHCR RIMAP, Jamaica · CCPR/C/JAM/CO/4
In the months before anyone was sent to Jamaica, Jamaicans were sent onward by the United States to other people’s countries: at least one to Equatorial Guinea in June 2026, and a group to Eswatini in July 2026 that reporting says included a 64-year-old pastor whose family said he had no criminal convictions in the United States and had been granted protection under the Convention against Torture in 2016. One Jamaican sent to Eswatini in 2025 has since been repatriated.
Sources: Third Country Deportation Watch, Jamaica · Jamaica Observer, 9 July 2026
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.
Jamaica signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States on 10 June 2026. The first transfer under it took place on Tuesday 13 October 2026, when 22 people arrived at Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston. Both monitoring trackers now record it: Third Country Deportation Watch in its summary last updated 27 October 2026, and the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants in its tracker last updated October 2026. By 28 October 2026, on the Foreign Minister’s figures, at least nine of the 22 had left Jamaica. This page does not yet carry an account from any of the people transferred, and much of it describes what a person sent here would find. Sources: USCRI tracker, October 2026 · Jamaica Observer, 28 October 2026 · Caribbean National Weekly, 29 October 2026 · Caribbean National Weekly, 14 October 2026 · Jamaica Observer, 14 October 2026 · Third Country Deportation Watch, Jamaica
Arrangement. A memorandum of understanding, signed 10 June 2026 and approved by Cabinet. The text has not been published, and the responsible minister told Parliament there is no intention to table it.
In force? Contested by the Government’s own statements. Its information service described the arrangement in the present tense on 18 June. On 26 June the minister said it “will not take effect until both countries complete operational guidelines”. In September 2026 the Government announced that the operating procedures had been finalized, but said “no start date has yet been finalised”. The first transfer followed on 13 October 2026, four months after signature. Signed is not the same as in effect, and this is the clearest illustration of that in the section.
Role. The Government describes Jamaica as a transit country: in the minister’s words, people would be “facilitated through a structured process to transit through Jamaica to a third territory, including return to their home countries”, and “are not being brought to Jamaica as permanent migrants”.
Transferred. 22 people on 13 October 2026, the first transfer under the memorandum. Both monitoring trackers now record it, Third Country Deportation Watch in its summary last updated 27 October 2026 and the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants in its tracker last updated October 2026. Sources: USCRI tracker, October 2026 · Jamaica Observer, 14 October 2026 · Third Country Deportation Watch, Jamaica
Announcing the flight, the Ministries of National Security and Peace and of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade said that “the first flight transporting Third Country Nationals under the agreement is expected to arrive in Jamaica shortly”, that “the number of persons anticipated will be a maximum of 25 persons per fortnight”, and that “this is a transit arrangement intended to facilitate the return of Third Country Nationals to their countries of origin or other receiving countries”. Sources: Jamaica Information Service, 13 October 2026 · Jamaica Gleaner, 12 October 2026
The Gleaner reported that the group, “seven women and 15 men”, “arrived on a flight some time after 1 p.m.” on 13 October. They “were processed and granted a 90-day landing” and “boarded a Jamaica Urban Transit Company bus, which left the airport with police escort for an undisclosed location”. Caribbean National Weekly reported that the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency “has granted them visitor status”. The minister was quoted by the Jamaica Observer: “We handed them over to International Organisation for Migration (IOM)”, “I cannot give you their housing”, and “They are free to do as they wish, like any visitor to Jamaica.” According to the Gleaner, “only five of the 22 migrants who arrived on Tuesday speak English.” Sources: Jamaica Gleaner, Kimone Francis, 14 October 2026 · Jamaica Gleaner, Karen Madden, 14 October 2026 · Caribbean National Weekly, 15 October 2026 · Jamaica Observer, 15 October 2026
The two newspapers describe the group differently, and the Coalition sets both accounts out without choosing between them. The Jamaica Observer, citing the joint update of the two ministries, reported that the group “represents seven nationalities”, mostly from Latin America, and that “no Caribbean Community (Caricom) national was among the group”; on 15 October it quoted the minister describing the group as “representing seven nationalities”. The Gleaner, in reports by Kimone Francis and Karen Madden citing the minister, described the 22 as “nationals from Ecuador and a European country”. Neither paper gives the number of each nationality, and the conflict is unresolved. Sources: Jamaica Observer, 14 October 2026 · Jamaica Observer, 15 October 2026 · Jamaica Gleaner, Kimone Francis, 14 October 2026 · Jamaica Gleaner, Karen Madden, 14 October 2026
Later reports add a third description. Caribbean National Weekly reported on 28 October 2026 that “The group included nationals of Latin American countries, including Ecuador and Honduras”; its report of 29 October 2026, like the Gleaner’s of 27 October, describes “15 men and seven women from Ecuador and one European country”. No source gives the number of each nationality, and the accounts remain unreconciled. Sources: Caribbean National Weekly, 28 October 2026 · Caribbean National Weekly, 29 October 2026 · Jamaica Gleaner, Sashana Small, 27 October 2026
The Gleaner reported that “Chang also confirmed that Jamaica rejected one of the TCNs while two were withdrawn.” Under the operating procedures, the minister said, the Government is to be given a list 72 hours before a removal, and “A response to the US is expected in 36 hours.” He was reported as “acknowledging that a second batch should arrive in two weeks”. He said the people may apply for asylum or refugee status, and that applying does not mean they will be accepted: “Doesn’t mean we accept, but they can also apply for that as well as they can ask for refugee status.” Sources: Jamaica Gleaner, Kimone Francis, 14 October 2026 · Jamaica Gleaner, Karen Madden, 14 October 2026
On 27 October 2026 the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, gave the first account of what had become of the group. The Gleaner reported that “Only one of the 22 third-country nationals (TCNs) who arrived in Jamaica from the United States more than two weeks ago has been returned to their homeland, while another has expressed a desire to remain in Jamaica”, a disclosure she made that day at a press conference at Jamaica House. It reports that she said “discussions were under way with the individual seeking to remain in Jamaica to remind them that the arrangement is intended to facilitate transit, rather than permanent settlement”, and that the people were being helped to return through “the assisted voluntary return programme operated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM)”. Source: Jamaica Gleaner, Sashana Small, 27 October 2026
The next day, at a post-Cabinet press briefing, she gave a further figure. The Jamaica Observer quoted her: “Yesterday I reported that one person had returned home, 21 continue to be in country and one had requested to stay.” She said that “nine of the 20 departed” on 27 October, the 20 being, on her figures, the 21 still in the country less the one who had asked to stay, and that the remaining eleven were at different stages of departure. On those figures ten of the 22 had left by 28 October 2026, eleven were preparing to leave and one had asked to stay. Caribbean National Weekly reported the same briefing as “Nine of the 22 third-country nationals sent to Jamaica from the United States under a bilateral migration arrangement have left the island”. The two reports differ by one, and the matter is unresolved. Neither says where those who left went. Sources: Jamaica Observer, 28 October 2026 · Caribbean National Weekly, 29 October 2026
There are two separate limits and they measure different things, so they are not in conflict with each other. One is a rate and one is a standing total.
On the rate both sources agree: up to 25 people every two weeks. On the standing total they do not. The Government’s own information service says “at no time will the number exceed 25”, and the minister is quoted saying that “no more than 25 individuals would be in Jamaica at any given time”. The monitoring project says no more than 10 at once, and the Government itself said in June 2026 that transfers would pause whenever more than 10 people were pending transfer or remaining in Jamaica. The Coalition publishes both and does not reconcile them. One further discrepancy is recorded rather than resolved: an outlet’s own narration in the same article gives fewer than fifty every two weeks, which does not match the figure it quotes the minister as giving.
A rate of 25 a fortnight and a standing total of 25 are only compatible if every group leaves within a fortnight. The Government has not said what happens if a group does not. Asked what would follow if all twenty-five decided to remain, the minister said the programme would stop immediately. That is a termination trigger, not an answer to the question.
These are the Government’s claims, quoted as claims. Prior health screening, identity verification, criminal record checks and clearance from the National Intelligence Bureau would be required. People with criminal antecedents would not be accepted. The United States would pay for the initial stay. Jamaica would retain authority to reject any individual proposed. Either party could terminate the whole arrangement without long notice.
On 28 October 2026 the Foreign Minister restated the Government’s position on criminal records, responding, the Jamaica Observer reported, to “a statement issued Tuesday by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS)”. Caribbean National Weekly quoted her: “Our arrangement does not agree to receive any criminals. They are vetted on the US side and they’re vetted on the Jamaica side before they enter Jamaica”, and “There are countries which have agreed to receive criminals. They exist. When the United States speaks about sending criminals on the TCN agreements, they send them to those countries. Jamaica is not one of them.” It reported that she said Jamaica had negotiated safeguards “to ensure that people transferred under the arrangement would not have criminal backgrounds beyond violations of US immigration law.” Sources: Caribbean National Weekly, 29 October 2026 · Jamaica Observer, 28 October 2026
One further claim deserves its own line because of how it is likely to be repeated. The Government’s information service states that similar agreements exist with several other states and cites “an approximate 94 per cent return rate”. No source is given for that figure, it is a government information service reporting a government claim, and at least one of the states named was still refusing the numbers the United States proposed as late as September 2026. The Coalition records it as a claim and nothing more. Source: Jamaica Information Service, 18 June 2026
Jamaica is a party to the refugee instruments. That is the opposite of Guyana and Saint Lucia, and it matters. What Jamaica does not have is a law.
Four independent sources say the same thing in different words. The refugee agency told the Human Rights Council in 2014 that Jamaica “has however not yet developed any domestic implementing legislation for the protection of refugees or the granting of asylum”, and recorded the adoption of a National Refugee Policy in 2009 as strengthening a pre-existing ad hoc framework. The Human Rights Committee, in its concluding observations of 22 November 2016, said at paragraph 39 that it was “concerned about the lack of legislation on the protection of asylum seekers and refugees”. The refugee agency’s own mapping of Jamaican law records that there is “no codified asylum law in force”, that no recent enactment has established formal status determination procedures, that people seeking protection are processed case by case “without a formalized legal framework or dedicated procedural safeguards”, and that the regime relies on “policy instruments and ad hoc measures rather than statutory mandates”. A detention monitoring project records that Jamaica “does not have an official asylum reception system” and that there are “no official mechanisms in place to assist in the identification of asylum seekers”. Sources: CCPR/C/JAM/CO/4, paragraph 39 · UNHCR RIMAP, Jamaica · Global Detention Project, Jamaica profile
So refugee status determination in Jamaica rests on a policy of 2009, adopted by the Government rather than enacted by Parliament. Whether Cabinet specifically approved it is widely described and the Coalition could not confirm it from a primary source. The statutes that do the work are immigration control statutes of 1942, 1945 and 1946, none of them a refugee statute. The operational agency is the passport, immigration and citizenship agency, under the Ministry of National Security. No appeal route is identified in any source the Coalition read.
Against that background, the Government’s public description of the route deserves to be set beside the legal record rather than paraphrased. Its information service wrote that persons who choose to stay “will have to apply to the courts for asylum”, and quoted the minister: “If they get asylum status, we retain them, if they don’t, we send them home.” The Gleaner reported the same words from his news conference of 17 June 2026: “And if they get asylum status we retain them.” Neither describes anything that exists. The Coalition states this as a mismatch between the official description and the legal record. It does not assert bad faith, and it notes that a government describing a procedure it does not have is a problem for the person told to use it whatever the reason.
One country condition bears directly on who could safely be sent here, and the Coalition sets it out because refusing to would be a failure of the exercise. Consensual sexual conduct between men is criminalised in Jamaica. The monitoring project records that this contributes to hostility, discrimination, exclusion and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and that a gay third country national transferred there would be placed at risk by it. The Coalition reports that as the project reports it and has not checked the criminalising provision against the statute itself.
In July 2026 hundreds of people demonstrated in Jamaica against the arrangement, on grounds of transparency and security. Jamaicans in the United States have organised against it as well. As of July 2026 more than three thousand Jamaicans were reported to be awaiting removal proceedings in the United States.
No country in this section illustrates the two-sidedness of this programme more sharply. Jamaica agreed in June 2026 to receive people and received none until 13 October 2026. In the same months its own nationals were being moved to countries not their own.
Reporting records at least one Jamaican national removed to Equatorial Guinea on or about 23 June 2026, and Jamaican nationals removed to Eswatini on or about 9 July 2026. Among the latter group, according to family accounts carried in the Jamaican press, was a 64-year-old pastor who had no criminal convictions in the United States and who had been granted protection under the Convention against Torture in 2016. A Jamaican national sent to Eswatini in 2025 has since been repatriated. A United States immigration attorney representing a Jamaican client has said publicly that these arrangements are being used to work around international human rights law.
The Coalition names none of the people concerned and offers no view on any proceeding before a court in another country. What it records is the shape: a state being asked to receive other people’s nationals while its own are being sent to a third continent, one of them said to have held protection granted under the very Convention this state has never joined.
A Jamaican broadcaster has reported that United States officials, frustrated by slow progress in negotiations, threatened to revoke the visas of Jamaican nationals, and that this prompted the Government to approve the arrangement. That is a single outlet’s account of what was said privately and the Coalition has not corroborated it. It is recorded here because it is on the public record in Jamaica and because a page that omitted it would be leaving out the explanation Jamaicans themselves have been given.
What is not in dispute is the surrounding dependence. The United States is Jamaica’s largest trading partner, many Jamaican goods enter it without tariff, United States firms operate widely in the country, and remittances account for a significant share of national income. United States development assistance had run for more than sixty years before a freeze on foreign aid. The Coalition sets those facts out without asserting that any of them caused any decision.
This is the thinnest supervisory position of any state in this section, and it is thin by choice rather than by omission.
Jamaica has never joined the Convention against Torture. It is absent from the depositary’s participants table, and its own report to the Human Rights Council in 2025 confirms it. There is therefore no Committee against Torture obligation of any kind: no reporting, no examination, no inquiry, and no individual complaint. It is not a party to the Optional Protocol either, so there is no preventive mechanism and no Subcommittee visit.
The other United Nations door was open once and was shut. Jamaica notified its denunciation of the First Optional Protocol to the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on 23 October 1997, and under article 12(1) of the Protocol a denunciation takes effect “three months after the date of receipt of the notification by the Secretary-General”. The Human Rights Committee still examines Jamaica under the Covenant itself, and did so in 2016, but an individual can no longer petition it. Source: UN Treaty Collection, ICCPR First Optional Protocol
Regionally, Jamaica ratified the American Convention on Human Rights in 1978 and has never accepted the contentious jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court. The Inter-American Commission’s petition system therefore remains the only individual route in existence, and it ends in a report that does not bind.
Domestically there is an Office of the Public Defender, whose published mandate is to investigate allegations of constitutional breach and maladministration by ministries, departments, agencies and statutory bodies. Its mandate is framed by subject matter rather than by nationality, so whether a person who is not a national could complain to it is a question worth putting to the office. The Coalition could not resolve it from the published material.
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 Government’s published account says a person choosing to stay must apply to a court for asylum. There is no such jurisdiction in Jamaican law. Time spent looking for it is time lost, and knowing that in advance is the single most useful thing on this page.
Status determination has been done case by case by the Government with the refugee agency and non-governmental organisations, when applicants come forward. Coming forward, to the passport and immigration agency and to the refugee agency at the same time, is what the record describes.
There is no office in the country. Jamaica sits inside a Northern and Eastern Caribbean operation run from Washington, which publishes no telephone number and an email address the Coalition could not read.
Jamaica is not a party to the Convention against Torture and left the individual complaints protocol in 1997. The Inter-American Commission remains open to petitions.
Every entry below was checked on 11 September 2026 against the source named in it, with its age stated. No contact for the refugee agency could be verified and none is printed. The Independent Jamaica Council for Human Rights exists and has appeared in United Nations processes, but the Coalition obtained no verified current details for it and prints none.
Official bodies
The operational immigration authority, under the Ministry of National Security. Regional offices in Montego Bay, Mandeville, May Pen, Saint Ann’s Bay and Port Antonio share the same number. Nothing on its website refers to asylum, and it publishes no opening hours
Checked 11 September 2026 · Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency
Investigates allegations of constitutional breach and maladministration by ministries, departments, agencies and statutory bodies. The mandate is framed by subject matter rather than nationality, so whether a person who is not a national may complain is a question for the office rather than one this page can answer. The website carries a 2025 copyright, so treat these details as up to a year old
Checked 11 September 2026, source up to a year old · Office of the Public Defender
State legal aid. The published page does not say which matters it covers, and Jamaica’s scheme is generally understood to be led by criminal work. Whether it reaches immigration or asylum matters is still being investigated and this page does not imply that it does. The website carries a 2024 copyright, so treat these details as up to two years old
Checked 11 September 2026, source up to two years old · Legal Aid Council
The refugee agency’s own regional page lists Jamaica among the countries it covers and states that the office is in Washington. It publishes no physical address for that office and no telephone number, and the email address is given in a form the Coalition could not read. Coverage is not presence, and this page prints no contact it could not verify. Source: UNHCR, About UNHCR Northern and Eastern Caribbean
The veto has been used. On the first flight, the Gleaner reported, the minister “confirmed that Jamaica rejected one of the TCNs while two were withdrawn.” Source: Jamaica Gleaner, Kimone Francis, 14 October 2026
It did not take effect until procedures were agreed. Its own minister said sixteen days after signature that the arrangement would not take effect until operational guidelines were complete; the procedures were announced as finalized in September 2026, and the first transfer followed on 13 October 2026, four months after signature. Source: Jamaica Observer, 14 October 2026
Screening, a veto and an exit are all claimed. Health screening, identity verification, criminal record checks and intelligence clearance; no one with criminal antecedents; authority to reject any individual; and termination by either party without long notice.
Jamaica is a party to the refugee instruments, which several states in this section are not, and adopted a refugee policy in 2009 that the refugee agency itself described as strengthening what came before.
The state is under real domestic scrutiny. The arrangement was debated in Parliament, hundreds demonstrated against it in July 2026, the diaspora has organised, and the press has pressed for the text.
The Human Rights Committee still examines Jamaica under the Covenant, and did so in 2016. The loss is the individual petition, not the supervision.
This page describes Jamaica 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. Jamaica also appears in a second project on this site, Countries Named in Protection Orders, because the Coalition’s register records matters in which a person held, or was found entitled to, protection against being returned here.
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. The register records both, and nothing has been moved: this guide stays where it is.
Ffriend v. Albarran, N.D. Cal., 14 May 2026, where withholding under the Convention against Torture had been granted on 13 November 2024. Douglas v. Baker, D. Md., 19 September 2025, and 24 October 2025.
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.
The text of the memorandum. Not published, and the responsible minister has said it will not be tabled.
Who the first group are. The Jamaica Observer reports seven nationalities, mostly Latin American, and the Gleaner nationals of Ecuador and a European country; Caribbean National Weekly reported on 28 October 2026 nationals of Latin American countries, “including Ecuador and Honduras”. Sources: Caribbean National Weekly, 28 October 2026 · Jamaica Observer, 14 October 2026 · Jamaica Gleaner, Kimone Francis, 14 October 2026
Where the first group is housed, and whether the person who asked to remain has applied for asylum. The Government has not disclosed where they are housed. On the Foreign Minister’s figures at least nine of the 22 had left Jamaica by 28 October 2026, and where they went has not been reported. Sources: Jamaica Gleaner, Sashana Small, 27 October 2026 · Jamaica Observer, 28 October 2026 · Caribbean National Weekly, 29 October 2026 · Jamaica Observer, 15 October 2026
Whether the second group the minister expected in about two weeks has arrived.
The standing cap. The Government has said both that the number will not exceed twenty-five and that transfers pause above ten; the monitoring project says ten.
What would happen to a group that did not leave within a fortnight.
Whether Cabinet specifically approved the 2009 refugee policy, and what that policy says, since its only public copy cannot be read.
Whether there is any appeal from a refusal of protection. No source the Coalition read identifies one.
Whether the Public Defender will take a complaint from a person who is not a national.
The source of the 94 per cent return rate the Government has cited.
Whether visa revocation was in fact threatened. One broadcaster reports it; the Coalition has not corroborated it.
The Coalition writes Investigating where a question has been asked and not yet answered.
The memorandum, and the National Refugee Policy 2009 in a readable form. Those two documents together would answer most of the questions above.
Verified contact details for the refugee agency’s covering office and for the Independent Jamaica Council for Human Rights.
Any account, in their own words, from the people transferred to Jamaica on 13 October 2026, or from the Jamaicans sent to Equatorial Guinea and Eswatini.
If you can correct anything on this page, the Coalition wants to hear it.
Every source relied on above, linked so it can be read in full rather than through this summary.
The arrangement. Jamaica Information Service, 18 June 2026, for the signature of 10 June 2026, the quota of twenty-five every two fortnightly period, the screening requirements, the United States paying for the initial stay, the transit framing, the termination clause, the asylum description and the ninety-four per cent claim. The Caribbean Camera, 26 June 2026, quoting the minister on the standing total and on the arrangement not taking effect until operational guidelines are complete. The Gleaner, 18 June 2026, for the minister’s parliamentary formulation. Third Country Deportation Watch, Jamaica page, for the standing cap of ten, the reported visa revocation threats, the removals of Jamaicans to Equatorial Guinea and Eswatini, the attorney’s statement, the protests, and the country conditions reported above, each attributed rather than adopted.
The first transfer. Jamaica Information Service, 13 October 2026, and the Gleaner, 12 October 2026, for the ministries’ announcement of the first flight, the rate of 25 a fortnight and the transit framing. The Gleaner, Kimone Francis, 14 October 2026, for the arrival, the numbers, the 90-day landing, the person refused and the two withdrawn, the notice procedure, the expected stay of fourteen days and the second group. The Gleaner, Karen Madden, 14 October 2026, for the nationalities as the minister gave them, the number who speak English and the remarks on asylum. Jamaica Observer, 14 October 2026, and Jamaica Observer, Billeane Williams, 15 October 2026, for the seven nationalities, the absence of Caricom nationals and the minister’s remarks on IOM and housing. Caribbean National Weekly, 14 October 2026, and Caribbean National Weekly, 15 October 2026, for the airport and the grant of visitor status.
Since arrival. The Gleaner, Sashana Small, 27 October 2026, for the Foreign Minister’s disclosure that one of the 22 had been returned home and one had asked to remain, and for the assisted voluntary return programme. Jamaica Observer, 28 October 2026, for her figures of 28 October and the statement to which she was responding. Caribbean National Weekly, Jovani Davis, 28 October 2026, for the nationalities it reports, and 29 October 2026, for the departure of nine and her statements on criminal records. Third Country Deportation Watch, Jamaica page, summary and background last updated 27 October 2026, and the United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants tracker, last updated October 2026, both of which now record the transfer of 13 October 2026.
The absence of an asylum law. UNHCR submission to the Universal Periodic Review, September 2014. Human Rights Committee, concluding observations on the fourth periodic report of Jamaica, CCPR/C/JAM/CO/4, 22 November 2016, paragraph 39. UNHCR rights mapping and analysis platform, Jamaica. Global Detention Project, Jamaica profile, last updated 7 April 2025.
Treaty status, from the depositary. United Nations Treaty Collection, chapter IV-9, in whose participants table Jamaica does not appear at all; chapter IV-9-b for the Optional Protocol, to which Jamaica is not a party; chapter IV-5 for the First Optional Protocol to the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, recording the notice of denunciation given on 23 October 1997. Inter-American Court of Human Rights, states accepting contentious jurisdiction, from which Jamaica is absent.
The regional statement. Caribbean Community statement on third country nationals, July 2026, which describes the purpose of these arrangements as transit back to people’s own countries. The concern about onward removal from one country to another that is sometimes attributed to that statement is the monitoring project’s inference, and the Coalition does not attribute it to the Conference.
Compiled 11 September 2026, updated on 27 October 2026 for the first transfer of 13 October 2026, and updated on 5 November 2026 for the Foreign Minister’s statements of 27 and 28 October 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: a statement that the two published caps for Jamaica were simply a rate and a standing total and therefore consistent, when the standing total itself is given as ten by the monitoring project and twenty-five by the Government, and the conflict is real; and a date taken from the web address of a United Nations press release rather than from the document, which was wrong by three years. No person transferred under any arrangement is named on this page, and no person whose case is before a court elsewhere is identified. Corrections to the Coalition.