Palau

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 receiving state agrees to.

What has happened

Palau is a country of about eighteen thousand people in the western Pacific. It agreed on 24 December 2025 to receive up to seventy-five people removed from the United States who are not its nationals, for a reported seven and a half million dollars. Three people have arrived. The arrangement was rejected twice before it was made, has been litigated by Palau’s own Senate, and rests on a document a court has described as apparently not binding.

Twice refused before it was agreed.

In July 2025 Palau’s lawmakers rejected an earlier request. On 3 October 2025 the Senate President wrote to the President advising against proceeding, on the practical difficulties the arrivals would create. The memorandum was signed on Christmas Eve. In late January 2026 the national congress voted to block the arrangement; the Senate’s blocking legislation was not approved by the House of Delegates. In February the Senate and two private citizens sued the President, the Minister of State and the Ministry of Finance on seventeen counts. The Supreme Court refused a restraining order in a twenty-nine page order on 16 February 2026, holding that the memorandum appears to be nonbinding and so is not a treaty requiring ratification. The remaining counts continue.

The Coalition sets this out because it is unusual and it matters. In most of the states in this project the arrangement was made quietly and contested nowhere. In Palau it was contested openly, by the legislature of the receiving state, in the receiving state’s own courts.

What happened to the first man, and what is not known about it.

He was a middle-aged Vietnamese man. He was housed in a dormitory at Palau Community College. After about two weeks he left, and the migration organisation assisted his departure. One report by the local paper says he returned to his home country at his own initiative. The same paper’s earlier account said only that he had departed. A news agency reported that where he went after Palau remains a mystery.

Whether a man was returned to Vietnam matters more than anything else on this page, and it would matter most of all if he held protection ordered by a United States court against return to Vietnam. No source establishes either fact. The Coalition sets the accounts side by side and does not choose between them.

What the record says about Palau itself

Palau is not a state with a torture record, and this page does not suggest otherwise. The 2023 and 2024 United States reports both record that the constitution and law prohibit such practices and that there were no credible reports that officials employed them. The concern here is of a different kind: not what is done, but that there is nothing a person could do about it if it were.

What the two editions say, and what the second one dropped.

The 2023 edition records that prison and detention centre conditions were inadequate and did not meet international standards, that the country’s only jail, in Koror, had no infirmary, and that police escorted ill prisoners to the hospital emergency room and guarded them there. Under independent monitoring it records that there was no system of independent monitoring. It also records that the Office of the Ombudsman within the Office of the President had been vacant since 2016.

The 2024 edition contains no prison or detention section at all, no jail finding, no monitoring finding, and no mention of the Ombudsman. Its summary states that there were no credible reports of significant human rights abuses. The Coalition treats the disappearance of the jail finding as a change in the reporting template and not as evidence that the jail acquired an infirmary.

United States Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Palau, 2023 and 2024 editions, both linked below.

There is no asylum law, and the immigration law points the other way.

Title 13 of the Palau National Code contains no occurrence of asylum, refugee, or refoulement, and no status determination procedure. What it does contain is section 1005(j), a ground on which the President may deny entry or revoke a permit where a person has been finally subject to a deportation order by the United States. It also provides, at section 1010, that the President may waive any procedural requirement of the chapter, and at section 1011 that a person who remains after a permit expires is subject to deportation only after a hearing, on the application of the President to the Supreme Court.

What immigration status the three men actually hold has not been disclosed. Palau’s Senate pleaded that visitor visas do not permit employment and that transferees would not qualify under labour import rules; the President’s office has said they can add to the domestic labour pool. Both positions are on the record and the Coalition does not resolve them, because the permits themselves have not been produced.

Title 13 of the Palau National Code, sections 1002, 1005(j), 1010 and 1011, linked below. The copy consulted is a code supplement that predates the memorandum, and no amendment to Title 13 in 2025 or 2026 was located.

What is open to a person in Palau

Every international door named anywhere on this site is shut here, and it is worth being exact about it, because a family that assumes otherwise will spend weeks writing to bodies that cannot answer.

The Committee against Torture. Closed, entirely. Palau signed the Convention in 2011 and never ratified it, so it is not a party and no declaration under article 22 is even possible.

Preventive visits. Closed. Palau does not appear in the record for the Optional Protocol.

The Human Rights Committee. Closed. Palau signed the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 2011 and never ratified it, and does not appear in the record for the first Optional Protocol.

The Refugee Convention. Not a party, nor to the 1967 Protocol.

The Universal Periodic Review. This is the one that gets mistaken for a remedy. It is a periodic review of the state by other states at the Human Rights Council; Palau’s fourth cycle was heard in May 2026 with the outcome adopted this month. It cannot hear an individual complaint, award anything, or stop a removal. Its use is that an organisation can put the arrangement on the record for the next cycle.

The Supreme Court of the Republic of Palau. Open, and it is the only forum that can order anything. It is also demonstrably usable: it took the Senate’s case, ruled within days, and let seventeen counts proceed. Under section 1011 the government has to come to that court to deport anyone. The 2023 United States report records that any person may challenge the lawfulness of arrest or detention in court, that detainees have prompt access to family and lawyers, and that a public defender or court-appointed lawyer is provided to a person who cannot afford one.

The persecution review committee. Created by presidential directive in January 2026 and composed of two ministers, the chief of staff and two presidential appointees, with the President deciding. It defers removal while a claim is reviewed. It is an executive process rather than an adjudication, it creates no status and no right to remain, and whether it has ever been convened is not known.

United Nations Treaty Collection, chapters IV-4, IV-5, IV-9, IV-9-b, V-2 and V-5, the depositary’s own record. A widely used monitoring table states that Palau ratified the Convention against Torture. That is wrong against the depositary, and the Coalition has written to the publisher.

The first days

Everything here happens inside Palau, because there is nowhere else for it to happen.

Who is reachable in Palau

There is no refugee or migrant legal aid organisation in Palau. The Coalition looked and there is not one. What exists is a small bar, a public defender, and a civil legal services office, all in Koror, and all reachable.

The Office of the Ombudsman exists within the Office of the President and was recorded as vacant since 2016 in the 2023 United States report. It is not mentioned in the 2024 edition. The Coalition has not listed it, because it could not confirm that anyone holds the post. There is no independent bar association website; the roster of the Palau Bar is published by the Judiciary. Investigating.

For officials who administer this

This section is addressed to officials in Palau, and it is not written as a warning. Palau agreed to receive people who are not its nationals, moved against their will, under a programme whose purpose had been stated publicly before the memorandum was signed. That agreement is the subject of this page, and nothing that has happened since alters it.

What officials in Palau now hold is the only record there will be. Palau signed the Convention against Torture in 2011 and the ratification never followed, so the obligation that would answer a claim of feared persecution is the one obligation the country has not taken on. The review committee created by directive in January 2026 is being asked to do, without a status to grant and without a private right of action, what a ratified convention and an asylum law would do by right. An official deciding such a claim is supplying from their own judgment what the legal framework does not supply, and the note they make of each decision is the only thing that will exist afterwards.

The dated record

Every entry below is a fact with a source.

What is not established

The text of the memorandum, which has never been published, so its terms on length of stay, work, onward removal and what the United States undertook are unknown. Whether any of the three men held withholding of removal or protection under the Convention against Torture ordered by a United States court; nothing has been found either way, and it is the most consequential unanswered question on this page. Where the first man went. What immigration status the three were given and whether they may work. Where the two who arrived in July are now, and whether they remain. Whether any of them consented in any meaningful sense; that the arrangement amounts to trafficking is pleaded in the Senate’s case and is a pleading, not a finding. Whether the persecution review committee has ever met.

The Coalition writes Investigating rather than none found, because the second phrase reads as though a question has been answered when it has only been asked.

What this page does not yet carry

The docket and the orders in the Senate’s case, which are held by the Palau Judiciary and would show what the seventeen counts allege and where they now stand.

Any amendment to Title 13 made in 2025 or 2026. The copy the Coalition consulted predates the memorandum.

Confirmation of whether anyone currently holds the office of Ombudsman.

If you can correct anything here, or you are in Palau and can say what a person in this position actually finds, the Coalition wants to hear it.

Sources

Every source used on this page, linked so it can be read in full rather than through the summaries above.

Treaty status, from the depositary. Convention against Torture, showing signature on 20 September 2011 and no ratification. Optional Protocol. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. First Optional Protocol to the Covenant. Refugee Convention. 1967 Protocol.

United States government. State Department readout, 23 December 2025. 2023 report on Palau. 2024 report. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, minority report, February 2026.

Palau law and courts. Title 13 of the Palau National Code. Palau Judiciary, Palau Bar members list.

Reporting. Island Times, on Presidential Directive No. 26-68. Island Times, on the lawsuit. Island Times, on the refusal of the restraining order. Island Times, on the first arrival and departure. Island Times, on the two July arrivals. Agence France-Presse, 2 July 2026. RNZ Pacific, 20 February 2026. Pacific Island Times, 24 December 2025.

Monitoring. United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Third Country Deportations tracker, whose entry stating that Palau ratified the Convention against Torture is wrong against the depositary. Universal Periodic Review record for Palau.

Institutions named on this page. Micronesian Legal Services Corporation, Palau office. Palau Judiciary.

Compiled 9 September 2026. Where this page summarises a decision or a report, the full document is linked above and should be read rather than relied on through the summary.