Third-Country Removals

This section is written for a person who holds withholding or deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture, or for someone helping him, and who has been told that he may be sent to a country other than his own. It describes what the protection means, what it does not mean, what courts have required before such a transfer, and why the period before the aircraft leaves is the only period in which any of that applies.

What the protection is

A grant of withholding or deferral rests on a finding by a United States immigration judge that the person would more likely than not be tortured if returned to a particular country.¹ That is a high standard, higher than the one for asylum, and the person has met it.² The finding is the government’s own: it was made in a proceeding the government conducted, on a record the government contested, and it remains in force unless it is terminated through the procedure the regulations prescribe, which requires new evidence, notice, and a fresh hearing.³

Where the person falls within one of the statutory bars, most often a conviction for a particularly serious crime, the judge cannot grant withholding but must grant deferral.⁴ Deferral is the minimum the Convention requires and it is not discretionary. A criminal record changes the form of the protection. It does not change the finding.

What the protection is not

The protection is specific to the country named in the order. It does not prevent removal from the United States, and it does not prevent removal to a different country. The regulation says so in terms, and the Supreme Court has described withholding the same way.⁵ A person who believes that protection against his own country means he cannot be sent anywhere is mistaken about the law, and a great deal of harm has followed from that mistake.

The protection also confers no status, no path to residence, and no freedom from detention. A person holding deferral can be held while the government looks for a country that will accept him, subject to the limits described under The Law.

What the question becomes

Because the government may lawfully select another country, the legal question is not whether it may do so but what will happen to the person when he arrives. The Convention prohibits sending a person to any state where he is in danger of torture, and international bodies have held that this includes sending him to a state that will foreseeably pass him on to the country he fled.⁶ Whether the receiving state has agreed to take him, or has promised not to torture him, does not answer that question. What answers it is whether he will be admitted, whether he will be detained, whether he can remain and work, and whether he can be sent onward.

Those are questions of fact about a particular country, and the Coalition’s country profiles collect what is publicly documented about each. They are also questions that United States courts have said the person is entitled to raise before he is transferred.

What courts have required

In a series of decisions during 2025 and 2026, federal district courts have held that a person may not be removed to a newly designated country without notice of that country and a meaningful opportunity to present a claim of fear concerning it, including a claim that the country will send him onward to the country he fled. Those decisions are described under The Law. Most of them come from courts in the Ninth Circuit, and the position elsewhere is contested; a nationwide class judgment to the same effect is stayed while an appeal is pending.⁷ The Coalition reports these as what courts have ordered in particular cases, not as a settled national rule.

Why timing is everything

In one reported case, five people holding withholding or protection under the Convention were transported to Ghana, and Ghana began returning them to the countries their protection concerned. When they sought emergency relief from a federal court, the court denied it, largely because they were already in Ghanaian custody and a United States court cannot order a foreign government to keep someone or not to deport him.⁸ The court did not reach the question of whether the transfer had been lawful. It could not give a remedy either way.

That is the practical centre of this whole subject. Almost every protection described in this project is built to work while the person is still in the United States. Once he has been delivered to another government, what a United States court can do becomes sharply constrained and depends heavily on the facts. It cannot order the receiving state to do anything. It can in some circumstances order the United States government to act. On 10 April 2025, in Noem v. Abrego Garcia, the Supreme Court held that a district court order “properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador”, while sending the case back for clarification of how far such an order may reach. The practical warning stands. Remedies after transfer are far harder to obtain, and slower. They are not nothing. The notice period before a transfer, which government guidance has reportedly set at twenty-four hours and in some circumstances six, is therefore not a procedural detail. It is the entire interval in which anything can be done.⁹

Using this project

The Law sets out the rules and the cases. The Countries collects what is documented about each receiving state. The Record describes the people whose treatment after transfer is a matter of public record. Sources lists everything with a link. Where to Find Help names organisations that represent individuals. The Coalition does not.

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

References

1. 8 C.F.R. §§ 1208.16(c), 1208.17, text at Cornell.
2. INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421 (1987).
3. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.17(d), text at Cornell.
4. 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(B); 8 C.F.R. § 1208.17(a).
5. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(f); Johnson v. Guzman Chavez, 594 U.S. 523 (2021).
6. Committee against Torture, Turhan v. Sweden, CAT/C/81/D/1109/2021 (2024), UN Digital Library; communication of United Nations special procedures to the United States (2026), OHCHR.
7. D.V.D. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (D. Mass.): class certification and preliminary injunction order, April 2025, National Immigration Project (PDF); final judgment 25 February 2026, stayed by the First Circuit 16 March 2026, appeal argued 13 May 2026 and still pending as of 9 September 2026, so the judgment is not in force. Sequence set out in the Coalition’s report, A Federal Court Set the Third-Country Removal Policy Aside. It Is Not in Force.
8. D.A. v. Noem, as reported by Human Rights First.
9. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, guidance on third-country removals, 9 July 2025, filed as ECF No. 190-1 in D.V.D. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:25-cv-10676 (D. Mass.), exhibit (PDF).

This section sets out the law as the statutes, regulations, treaties and decided cases state it. It reports holdings; it does not argue for outcomes. Where the law is settled it says so. Where a question has not been decided, the ninth part says that, because the honest map of this subject has as many open questions as closed ones. Every authority is listed with a link under Sources.

Contents: 1. The protection · 2. The power to remove to a third country · 3. The limits · 4. Diplomatic assurances · 5. Detention while a country is sought · 6. Notice and the opportunity to be heard · 7. Which court can hear it · 8. Proving what will happen · 9. What no court has decided

1. The protection

Protection under the Convention Against Torture takes two forms in United States law, withholding of removal and deferral of removal, and both rest on the same finding: that it is more likely than not the person would be tortured if removed to the proposed country.¹ Torture is defined by regulation as severe pain or suffering, physical or mental, intentionally inflicted for a proscribed purpose by or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official; acquiescence includes willful blindness.² No connection to a protected ground is required.

Withholding is barred for persons who persecuted others, were convicted of a particularly serious crime and are a danger to the community, committed a serious nonpolitical crime abroad, or are a danger to national security.³ Where the burden of proof is met but a bar applies, the immigration judge must grant deferral.⁴ Deferral is temporary, confers no status, and leaves the government’s detention authority in place subject to custody review.⁵ It can be terminated only through a prescribed procedure: new evidence, notice, and a fresh hearing before an immigration judge, with protection continuing if torture remains more likely than not.⁶ A protected person’s own request to be returned cannot end the protection unless the judge is satisfied the request is knowing and voluntary.⁷

The Supreme Court has held that factual challenges to a decision on protection under the Convention remain reviewable in the courts of appeals notwithstanding the provisions that limit review for persons with certain criminal convictions.⁸

2. The power to remove to a third country

Both forms of protection are country-specific. The regulation provides that nothing in it shall prevent the Service from removing an alien to a third country other than the country to which removal has been withheld or deferred.⁹ The Supreme Court has described withholding as preventing removal to the protected country rather than removal from the United States.¹⁰

Congress set out a hierarchy of countries to which a person may be removed, ending in a residual category reached where the earlier options are impracticable, inadvisable or impossible.¹¹ The Supreme Court has held that the residual provision permits removal to a country without the advance consent of its government.¹²

Two decisions of the Board of Immigration Appeals govern how the power is exercised. The Board has held that where there is no final order of removal that can be executed, the Department of Homeland Security has no authority to remove a person to an alternative country, and that a judge granting withholding must include an explicit order of removal.¹³ And the Board has held that where the Department states that a person may be removed to a particular country, the person may seek withholding of removal from that country in withholding-only proceedings, even if it differs from the country originally designated.¹⁴

3. The limits

Article 3 of the Convention prohibits a State Party from expelling, returning or extraditing a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing he would be in danger of being subjected to torture. The Committee against Torture treats the prohibition as absolute.¹⁵ Congress implemented it in the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, declaring it the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to such a country.¹⁶

The Committee against Torture has applied Article 3 to a transfer through an intermediate country. In Turhan v. Sweden, decided in November 2024, Sweden proposed removing a Turkish national to Kosovo. Kosovo was not characterised as a country where he would be tortured; the Committee found that Sweden would nonetheless violate Article 3 because there was a foreseeable, real and personal risk that Kosovo would transfer him onward to Türkiye, where he faced torture.¹⁷ In 2026 United Nations special procedures addressed the United States programme directly, stating that a protected person must never be removed to another State from which they may subsequently face removal to a third State where torture is foreseeable, and naming the concept indirect or chain refoulement.¹⁸ The Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees separately defines constructive refoulement as the deliberate creation of legal, material, economic or physical conditions that leave a protected person no meaningful choice but return to danger.

Decisions of treaty bodies are not binding on United States courts, and the Convention is not self-executing. They are evidence of the meaning of the obligation that FARRA was enacted to implement. The D.C. Circuit has construed FARRA’s judicial review provision narrowly, holding that it provides for review of conditions in the receiving country only in the immigration context, for aliens seeking review of a final order of removal.¹⁹ That construction excludes extradition and military transferees. It places persons with final orders of removal, which is to say the people this project concerns, on the side of the line where review is available.

Congress addressed transfer to third countries directly in a different setting. The asylum statute permits an applicant to be sent to a third country only under a bilateral or multilateral agreement, where the person would not face persecution there, and where he would have access to a full and fair procedure for protection.²⁰ That provision does not govern removal after a final order, which proceeds under a separate section. It shows what Congress required of a third-country transfer when it legislated for one expressly.

4. Diplomatic assurances

The regulations permit the Secretary of State to obtain assurances from the government of a receiving country that the person will not be tortured there. Where the Executive determines those assurances sufficiently reliable, the immigration judge, the Board and the asylum officer do not further consider the claim.²¹ An assurance found reliable therefore does not enter the adjudication as evidence to be weighed; it takes the place of the adjudication.

The Third Circuit has held that a person already granted deferral is entitled to due process before it is terminated on the basis of assurances, and that termination without an opportunity to test their reliability violated the Due Process Clause. The court described the process required as an opportunity to present, before a neutral and impartial decisionmaker, evidence and arguments challenging the reliability of diplomatic assurances proffered by the Government, and the Government’s compliance with the relevant regulations, together with an individualised determination on a record disclosed to the person.²² The decision has not been overruled, limited or distinguished. The Ninth Circuit, in an extradition case, took a narrower view, holding that the inquiry ends once a properly signed declaration from the Secretary of State is received.²³

International bodies have found assurances insufficient against a known risk. In Agiza v. Sweden the Committee against Torture found a violation of Article 3 where Sweden had removed a person to Egypt on assurances that he would not be tortured; in Alzery v. Sweden the Human Rights Committee held that the content, enforcement, reliability and monitoring of assurances all bear on their weight.²⁴ The Committee against Torture’s General Comment No. 4 warns that assurances must not be used as a loophole to undermine the prohibition.²⁵

An assurance that a receiving state will not torture a person says nothing about whether he will be admitted, detained, permitted to remain, permitted to work, given access to a procedure, or sent onward to the country he fled. Those are the questions on which the lawfulness of a transfer turns, and an assurance limited to torture by the receiving state’s own officials does not reach them.

5. Detention while a country is sought

After a removal order becomes final, the government may detain the person for a period reasonably necessary to bring about removal. The Supreme Court has held that six months is presumptively reasonable and that detention beyond it is permitted only while removal remains reasonably foreseeable.²⁶ Release is on an order of supervision.²⁷ That remedy does not depend on any finding about a third country; it depends only on whether removal is foreseeable at all.

The two rules interlock in a way that matters for a protected person. A district court has held that a person granted protection under the Convention failed in his claim for release because the government was actively pursuing his removal to a third country.²⁸ On that reasoning the search for a receiving state is at once the thing the person fears and the legal justification for continuing to hold him while it goes on. Where the search fails, the same doctrine produces release: in 2026 district courts ordered the release of persons holding deferral where no third country was likely to accept them.²⁹ In one case a court first dismissed the person’s challenge to a third-country designation for want of jurisdiction and, months later, ordered his release because no country would take him.³⁰

United States courts have also addressed pressure applied to detained people to accept return. The Ninth Circuit affirmed a permanent injunction on findings that the immigration agency engaged in a pattern and practice of pressuring or intimidating detained Salvadorans to request voluntary departure to El Salvador.³¹ A district court has described the processing environment for detained people as inherently coercive and held waivers obtained in it to be involuntary.³² Another has noted that detained persons refused return despite the coercive pressure of incarceration.³³ Against these, the Board of Immigration Appeals has held that a judge may condition voluntary departure on continued detention, and a state supreme court has treated a departure negotiated while incarcerated as voluntary.³⁴

Inside the United States, a protected person’s request to be returned to the country of feared torture cannot be acted on unless an immigration judge is satisfied it is knowing and voluntary.³⁵ No equivalent examination takes place after transfer, because no United States judge has jurisdiction over a person held in another country.

6. Notice and the opportunity to be heard

In a class action in the District of Massachusetts, the court entered a preliminary injunction in 2025 and final judgment on 25 February 2026 declaring that persons subject to third-country removal have a right to meaningful notice of the proposed country and a meaningful opportunity to raise a claim of fear concerning it, and setting aside the government’s third-country removal policies of March and July 2025 as not in accordance with law.³⁶ The Supreme Court stayed the preliminary injunction in June 2025 without opinion; the First Circuit stayed the final judgment in March 2026; the appeal was argued in May 2026 and remains pending. The judgment is not in effect. The Coalition reports it as a district court’s holding under appeal.

Individual decisions have reached the same conclusion in particular cases. Courts in California and Washington have ordered, as reported, that a person holding protection may not be removed to a newly designated country without written notice and an opportunity to present a claim of fear before an immigration judge, including in cases where the fear asserted was that the new country would send the person onward to the country his protection concerned.³⁷ One court expressly found that a screening which asked only whether the receiving country would torture the person was not a meaningful opportunity to present his claim that it would return him to the country he fled.³⁸ In one 2026 case the court both ordered the person’s release and enjoined his removal to any third country without such process.³⁹ Earlier authority in the District of Arizona described the Department’s affirmative obligation to make a determination regarding an alien’s claim of fear before deporting him to such country.⁴⁰

In the case of a man removed to El Salvador despite a withholding order against that country, the government conceded the removal was unlawful, and the Supreme Court held that the district court’s order properly required the government to facilitate his release from foreign custody and to handle his case as if the removal had not occurred.⁴¹ The district court later ordered seventy-two hours’ written notice to him and his counsel of any intended third country before removal.

Government guidance issued in July 2025 provides, as reported, that where the United States has received credible assurances from a receiving country, removal may proceed without further procedures, and that otherwise the person is notified but not asked whether he fears the country, with an interval ordinarily of twenty-four hours and in exigent circumstances of six.⁴² Several courts have found that process constitutionally inadequate in the cases before them.

7. Which court can hear it

Three provisions of the immigration statute limit the jurisdiction of district courts. One removes jurisdiction over decisions to commence proceedings, adjudicate cases or execute removal orders.⁴³ One channels questions arising from any action taken to remove a person into a petition for review in the court of appeals.⁴⁴ One makes the petition for review the sole means of reviewing a final order of removal.⁴⁵ The Supreme Court has held that the first of these applies only to three discrete actions and does not cover every claim connected with removal.⁴⁶

The Ninth Circuit held in 2025 that the first provision did not bar a claim by a Cuban national, granted withholding against Cuba, who had been removed to Mexico, a country never designated in his order. The court treated the post-hearing selection of Mexico as a separate decision, distinct from execution of the order, and its legality as a question the court could reach.⁴⁷ The decision concerned a claim for damages. Rehearing en banc was denied in June 2026 over a dissent joined by twelve judges, which argued that the panel had nullified the provision and that every other circuit to consider the distinction had rejected it.⁴⁸ District courts within the Ninth Circuit have since applied the decision’s reasoning to petitions seeking to prevent a removal before it happens.⁴⁹ No court of appeals has yet held that it extends that far, and the Third, Seventh, Eighth and Eleventh Circuits have taken the narrower view. A person’s ability to reach a federal district court on this question therefore depends, as the law now stands, on which circuit he is in.

Courts have also addressed the channelling provision. A district court has held that it is a judicial channeling provision, not a claim-barring one, and does not apply to claims that cannot be raised within the administrative process.⁵⁰ The Ninth Circuit has held that the Board of Immigration Appeals lacks jurisdiction to decide constitutional questions.⁵¹ The Supreme Court has stated that challenges to inhumane conditions of confinement are not channelled.⁵² Where the channelling provisions do apply, the statute preserves review of constitutional claims and questions of law in the court of appeals: the effect is to move the forum, not to close the door.⁵³

Two courts of appeals have held that FARRA’s judicial review restriction removes habeas jurisdiction over claims under the Convention, but each confined that holding to persons outside the immigration removal process, and each stated that persons seeking review of a final order of removal are within the review the statute allows.⁵⁴ The Third and Ninth Circuits have held that the statute does not contain the clear statement needed to remove habeas jurisdiction.⁵⁵ The Supreme Court has held that repeal of habeas jurisdiction requires specific and unambiguous statutory language, and district courts have held that the Suspension Clause preserves jurisdiction where removal would foreclose any other means of review.⁵⁶

8. Proving what will happen

The Attorney General has held that a claim under the Convention cannot be established by stringing together a series of suppositions where the evidence does not establish that each step in the hypothetical chain of events is more likely than not to happen.⁵⁷ On that formulation a claim resting on one long sequence of contingencies fails.

The Ninth Circuit has limited the rule to a single dependent sequence. Where there are multiple independent ways in which torture may occur, the adjudicator must consider their aggregate probability, and precise mathematical quantification is neither always possible nor desirable.⁵⁸ In a published decision of August 2026 the same court held that an adjudicator may not demand statistical evidence of future torture that may not exist, since the regulation requires consideration of all relevant evidence.⁵⁹

Courts give State Department country reports considerable deference and have described them as the most appropriate resource on country conditions, while holding that such a report standing alone cannot rebut a showing of past persecution.⁶⁰ The Coalition’s country profiles link to those reports for each receiving state.

A person who already holds protection against his own country is in a different evidentiary position from an applicant starting afresh. The last step in any chain, that torture is likely in that country, has already been adjudicated in his favour and remains in force. The contested question is whether, and how probably, transfer to the intermediate country will result in his arrival there.

9. What no court has decided

The following questions are open as of 3 September 2026. No United States court has adopted, or squarely rejected on the merits, the proposition that removal to a country which will foreseeably return a person to the country of feared torture is itself prohibited; the cases that approached it were decided on jurisdictional or other grounds.⁶¹ No court has read the phrase otherwise effect the involuntary return in FARRA to reach an indirect return, and none has held that it does not. No court or Board decision has held that the regulation permitting removal to a third country is subject to an assessment of torture risk there, or that it is not. No court has held that a person’s agreement to return, given in detention in a third country, is or is not voluntary. No court has held that a grant of withholding or deferral is a protected liberty interest for constitutional purposes, though the Third Circuit has held that a person granted deferral is entitled to due process before it is terminated.⁶² No court has considered payments to a receiving state as evidence of whether onward removal is foreseeable. No court of appeals has applied the six-month detention rule to a person holding deferral whose third-country removal is not foreseeable; district courts have gone both ways. And no court of appeals has decided whether the Ninth Circuit’s 2025 jurisdictional holding extends to a petition seeking to prevent a removal before it occurs.

On one further question the courts have spoken, and against the theory. Three courts of appeals have held that the doctrine of state-created danger, under which a government that places a person in danger owes him a duty of protection, has no application to a claim that a person should not be removed from the United States.⁶³ The Ninth Circuit affirmed, in 1996, an injunction against returning a government witness to a country where he faced torture, on the ground that the government’s conduct in constructing the choice he faced shocked the conscience; no court has extended that decision beyond a government witness, and the one asked to do so declined.⁶⁴ The courts that rejected the doctrine did not cite it.

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

10. The memorandum, in its own words

This page has until now described the Immigration and Customs Enforcement guidance of 9 July 2025 as it was characterised in filings. A federal court has since set out what it provides, quoting the document as it was put before it.

Removal to a third country with no notice at all where the receiving state has given assurances that the person will not be persecuted or tortured. Otherwise twenty-four hours, or as little as six if the person is given a reasonable means and opportunity to speak to a lawyer before removal. And, in the memorandum’s own words as the court reproduced them, the government “will not affirmatively ask whether the alien is afraid of being removed to the country of removal.”

The court held that those policies, implemented without further procedures, would violate due process, and it enjoined removal of the petitioner to any third country unless he were given written notice in a language he understands, a minimum of ten days to raise a claim under the Convention against Torture, and fifteen days to seek reopening.

Feh v. Noem, No. 3:26-cv-00578-LL-BLM (S.D. Cal. 11 March 2026), Judge Linda Lopez, ECF 6, read in full. The memorandum is described at ECF 1-3 at 2. The Coalition sets out what the court recorded and does not interpret it.

11. Where the challenge to the policy now stands

On 25 February 2026 the District of Massachusetts held that the third-country removal policy “is contrary to section 1231(b)(2)-(3) and the Due Process Clause,” and set aside the policy as embodied in two named memoranda: the Department of Homeland Security’s of 30 March 2025 and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s of 9 July 2025.

The same order also dissolved the preliminary injunction of 18 April 2025 and dismissed four of the six counts. The judgment was stayed. The First Circuit granted a stay on 16 March 2026, heard argument on 13 May 2026 before Judges Montecalvo, Howard and Aframe, and had not ruled as at 8 September 2026.

Anyone relying on the February decision should know that it is not currently in force.

D.V.D. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:25-cv-10676-BEM (D. Mass.), Judge Brian E. Murphy, docket 241, 25 February 2026, 81 pages, read in full. Appeal No. 26-1212 (1st Cir.), docket checked 8 September 2026. The Supreme Court stayed the earlier preliminary injunction on 23 June 2025, No. 24A1153, Justice Sotomayor dissenting with Justices Kagan and Jackson.

References

1. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(c); 8 C.F.R. § 1208.17. § 1208.16 at Cornell; § 1208.17 at Cornell.
2. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.18(a)(1), (a)(7). § 1208.18 at Cornell.
3. 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(3)(B). § 1231 at Cornell.
4. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.17(a).
5. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.17; 8 C.F.R. part 241.
6. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.17(d).
7. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.17(e).
8. Nasrallah v. Barr, 590 U.S. 573 (2020). Opinion (PDF).
9. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16(f).
10. Johnson v. Guzman Chavez, 594 U.S. 523 (2021).
11. 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(2)(A)–(E).
12. Jama v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 543 U.S. 335 (2005). Syllabus at Cornell.
13. Matter of I-S- & C-S-, 24 I. & N. Dec. 432 (BIA 2008).
14. Matter of A-S-M- (BIA Apr. 9, 2021).
15. Convention against Torture, arts. 2(2), 3, text at OHCHR; Committee against Torture, General Comment No. 4 (2017) on the implementation of article 3.
16. Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, Pub. L. No. 105-277, div. G, tit. XXII, § 2242(a), 112 Stat. 2681-822 (8 U.S.C. § 1231 note).
17. Committee against Torture, Turhan v. Sweden, communication No. 1109/2021, CAT/C/81/D/1109/2021 (8 November 2024). UN Digital Library; see also Report of the Committee against Torture, A/80/44.
18. Communication of United Nations special procedures to the United States (2026). OHCHR.
19. Omar v. McHugh, 646 F.3d 13 (D.C. Cir. 2011).
20. 8 U.S.C. § 1158(a)(2)(A). § 1158 at Cornell.
21. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.18(c).
22. Khouzam v. Attorney General, 549 F.3d 235 (3d Cir. 2008). CourtListener.
23. Garcia v. Thomas, 683 F.3d 952 (9th Cir. 2012).
24. Committee against Torture, Agiza v. Sweden, communication No. 233/2003 (2005), Refworld; Human Rights Committee, Alzery v. Sweden, communication No. 1416/2005 (2006).
25. Committee against Torture, General Comment No. 4 (2017).
26. Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001). Syllabus at Cornell.
27. 8 U.S.C. § 1231(a)(3); 8 C.F.R. § 241.5.
28. Ali v. Barlow, 446 F. Supp. 2d 604 (E.D. Va. 2006).
29. Order in Hernandez Menendez (M.D. Fla. 2026), court document; Abghari v. Hermosillo, No. 2:26-cv-00269 (W.D. Wash. 2026), as reported.
30. T.A. v. Sage (M.D. Pa. 2025–2026), as reported.
31. Orantes-Hernandez v. Thornburgh, 919 F.2d 549 (9th Cir. 1990). Justia.
32. Perez-Funez v. District Director, 619 F. Supp. 656 (C.D. Cal. 1985).
33. Hamama v. Adducci, 349 F. Supp. 3d 665 (E.D. Mich. 2018).
34. Matter of M-A-S-, 24 I. & N. Dec. 762 (BIA 2009); Commonwealth v. Al Saud, 459 Mass. 221 (2011).
35. 8 C.F.R. § 1208.17(e).
36. D.V.D. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security (D. Mass.): class certification and preliminary injunction order, April 2025 (PDF); final judgment 25 February 2026, No. 25-cv-10676; DHS v. D.V.D., No. 24A1153 (U.S. 23 June 2025), respondents’ opposition to stay (PDF).
37. Karapetyan v. Warden of Otay Mesa Detention Center, No. 3:26-cv-00697 (S.D. Cal. 10 June 2026); Kumar v. Wamsley, No. 2:26-cv-00294 (W.D. Wash. 2026); Shahi v. Noem (E.D. Cal. 27 July 2026); Esmaeili v. Noem (S.D. Cal. 2026); Khazanov v. Bullock, No. 3:26-cv-00401 (E.D. Va. 2026); all as reported.
38. Maldonado-Lux v. Hernandez (W.D. Wash. 5 Aug. 2026), as reported.
39. Avila Castillo v. Chestnut, No. 1:25-cv-01296-SAB-HC (E.D. Cal. 16 Jan. 2026), as reported.
40. Ibarra-Perez v. Howard (D. Ariz. 23 June 2020), citing Aden v. Nielsen.
41. Noem v. Abrego Garcia, No. 24A949 (U.S. 7 Apr. 2025). Cornell.
42. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, third-country removal guidance, 9 July 2025, as described in D.V.D. filings, plaintiffs’ reply, March 2026 (PDF).
43. 8 U.S.C. § 1252(g).
44. 8 U.S.C. § 1252(b)(9).
45. 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(5).
46. Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, 525 U.S. 471, 482 (1999).
47. Ibarra-Perez v. United States, 154 F.4th 989 (9th Cir. 2025). Justia; Ninth Circuit (PDF).
48. Ibarra-Perez v. United States, No. 24-631 (9th Cir. 25 June 2026) (order denying rehearing en banc; Bea, J., dissenting). CourtListener.
49. Avila Castillo v. Chestnut, above; Yang v. Kaiser, No. 2:25-cv-02205 (E.D. Cal. 20 Aug. 2025); Perez Canet v. Blanche, 2026 WL 1091763 (D. Nev. 22 Apr. 2026); all as reported.
50. Jimenez v. Nielsen, 334 F. Supp. 3d 370 (D.D.C. 2018).
51. Wang Zong Xiao v. Reno, 81 F.3d 808, 814 (9th Cir. 1996); Magana-Pizano v. INS (9th Cir. 1998).
52. Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U.S. 281 (2018) (opinion of Alito, J.).
53. 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(D).
54. Mironescu v. Costner, 480 F.3d 664 (4th Cir. 2007); Omar v. McHugh, above.
55. Ogbudimkpa v. Ashcroft, 342 F.3d 207 (3d Cir. 2003); Cornejo-Barreto v. Siefert, 379 F.3d 1075 (9th Cir. 2004); Garcia v. Thomas, above.
56. INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289 (2001); Compere v. Nielsen, 358 F. Supp. 3d 170 (D.N.H. 2019); Ragbir v. Homan (2d Cir. 2019).
57. Matter of J-F-F-, 23 I. & N. Dec. 912 (A.G. 2006). Department of Justice (PDF).
58. Velasquez-Samayoa v. Garland, 49 F.4th 1149 (9th Cir. 2022).
59. Parada Calderon v. Blanche (9th Cir. 28 Aug. 2026), as reported.
60. Hoxhallari v. Gonzales, 468 F.3d 179, 186 (2d Cir. 2006); Makaj v. Mukasey, 319 F. App’x 507 (9th Cir. 2009).
61. Arar v. Ashcroft, 585 F.3d 559 (2d Cir. 2009); Omar v. Geren, 689 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2009); Omar v. McHugh, above.
62. Khouzam v. Attorney General, above; Khouzam v. Hogan, 529 F. Supp. 2d 543 (M.D. Pa. 2008).
63. Kamara v. Attorney General, 420 F.3d 202 (3d Cir. 2005), Justia; Enwonwu v. Gonzales, 438 F.3d 22 (1st Cir. 2006); Vicente-Elias v. Mukasey, 532 F.3d 1086 (10th Cir. 2008).
64. Wang Zong Xiao v. Reno, 81 F.3d 808 (9th Cir. 1996); Ramos v. Nielsen (N.D. Cal. 2018).

Thirty-five states are recorded as having agreed to receive, or as having received, people removed from the United States who are not their nationals. The monitoring project counted twenty-six as having actually received them as of early August 2026, and at least one more has received people since, Liberia, on 20 August 2026. The monitoring organisations describe more than 23,000 transfers and more than $49 million in United States funding connected to the arrangements. This section profiles each state: the arrangement as reported, the transfers as reported, the state’s human rights record as documented by the United States Department of State and United Nations bodies, and what the reported outcomes show.

How to read the labels

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

Every profile also carries one label on refoulement, because that is the question the whole programme turns on. Refoulement documented means a source named in the profile records that people transferred to that state were afterwards returned to the country they had left, or moved on towards it. Refoulement risk means no such return is documented, but the terms of the arrangement, the receiving state’s own description of its role, or the reported conditions make onward return a live question. Refoulement: record not available means the Coalition has located no evidence either way. It is a statement about what we have been able to find, not a statement that nobody was returned, and for most of these states nobody has yet looked.

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

Where the information comes from

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

General sources: USCRI Third Country Deportations tracker · Human Rights Watch, 23 September 2025 · State Department 2023 reports (index) · State Department 2024 reports (index) · OHCHR treaty body database.

What the profiles show together

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

What the profiles do not show, and should

Reading the country profiles one at a time hides the thing they have in common. The Coalition checked, against the depositary’s own records rather than any summary, which international routes are open to a person held in each of the nine African states examined most closely: Sierra Leone, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Uganda, Burundi, Cabo Verde and Rwanda.

All nine have closed the direct route to the African Court.

Four never ratified the Protocol establishing the Court and are not parties: Sierra Leone, South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Liberia. Cabo Verde has never signed it at all. Three ratified but have never made the declaration under article 34(6) that lets an individual or a non-governmental organisation file directly: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. Rwanda made that declaration on 22 January 2013 and withdrew it, the withdrawal taking effect on 1 March 2017.

An individual can reach the Court only indirectly, if the African Commission refers the matter.

Eight of the nine have closed the Committee against Torture.

Only Burundi has made the declaration under article 22 of the Convention against Torture accepting complaints from individuals, on 10 June 2003. In the other eight the Committee has no competence to receive a complaint at all.

Uganda is worth stating precisely, because it is easily misread. It made the declaration under article 21 on 19 December 2001, which accepts complaints from other states, conditioned on reciprocity. That gives a detained person nothing.

Preventive inspection exists in three of the nine.

Sierra Leone signed the Optional Protocol in 2003 and never ratified it. Uganda is neither party nor signatory. In both, the United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture has no mandate at all and no national mechanism is owed.

Of the seven that are parties, only Cabo Verde and Rwanda have designated a national mechanism. Liberia has been a party for twenty-two years without one, the Democratic Republic of the Congo for sixteen, Burundi for thirteen, South Sudan for eleven, and the Central African Republic for ten. All five are on the Subcommittee’s list of states not complying with that obligation.

The Subcommittee has visited four of them: Liberia twice, in 2010 and 2018; Cabo Verde in 2019; the Democratic Republic of the Congo in December 2024; and Rwanda in October 2017, where the visit was suspended and then terminated in June 2018, the only termination in the Subcommittee’s history. It has never visited South Sudan, the Central African Republic or Burundi.

What that adds up to.

For seven of the nine, every one of these three routes is closed. Burundi has one open, the individual complaint, while having no national mechanism and never having received a visit. Cabo Verde is the reverse: the strongest preventive machinery in the group, no complaint route at all, and no report submitted to the Committee against Torture since it acceded in 1992.

The Coalition sets this out because the arrangements under which people are transferred are made with states chosen by the sending government, and the question of what a transferred person can do about it afterwards is answered, in most of these countries, by nothing.

Compiled 8 September 2026 from the United Nations Treaty Collection, chapters IV-9 and IV-9-b, the depositary’s own record; the United Nations Treaty Body Database; the annual reports of the Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture; and the African Union’s depositary list for the Protocol establishing the African Court. Sixteen of the eighteen treaty actions by these nine states are accessions rather than ratifications, and two widely used secondary tables carry date errors, so the Coalition cites the depositary and not those tables.

But there is a court in eight of the nine, and it is not the African Court.

The paragraphs above are about the African Court, and read alone they would leave a false impression. Eight of these nine states belong to a sub-regional community whose court is open to individuals directly, with no declaration required and no need to exhaust local remedies first. The Coalition set this out late and corrects it here.

Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cabo Verde are members of the Economic Community of West African States. Its Community Court of Justice takes applications from individuals under article 10(d) of the 2005 Supplementary Protocol, requires no exhaustion of local remedies, and attaches no nationality condition: a Belgian national deported from Ghana and a Venezuelan national detained in Cabo Verde have both succeeded there. Its weakness is compliance, which the Court’s own President put at about 22 per cent in June 2025.

Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are members of the East African Community. Its Court of Justice takes references from any person resident in a Partner State, again with no exhaustion requirement. Its weaknesses are three: a two-month limit that runs from the day a detention begins and cannot be extended for any reason, no human rights jurisdiction as such so a claim must be pleaded as a breach of the Treaty, and free movement protections that reach only citizens of Partner States.

The Central African Republic has neither. It has not ratified the African Court Protocol, the Central African community’s court does not function, and the monetary community’s court has no human rights jurisdiction. It is the only one of the nine with no court outside its own borders.

The pattern worth noticing is not that every door is shut. It is which doors are shut where, and that the two states with the most functional machinery, Cabo Verde and Burundi, have received among the fewest people.

And the four other African states on this page do not follow the same pattern.

Ghana is the exception to everything above. It deposited the declaration under article 34(6) of the African Court Protocol on 10 March 2011 and has never withdrawn it, so an individual can go directly to the African Court against Ghana. Seven African states have that declaration in force and Ghana is the only receiving state among them. Ghana is also an ECOWAS member, so both courts are open at once. No other country on this page has two.

Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea are in the same position as the Central African Republic, for slightly different reasons. Cameroon ratified the African Court Protocol in 2015 but never made the article 34(6) declaration; Equatorial Guinea signed in 1998 and never ratified at all. Both belong to the Central African community, whose Court of Justice has never been constituted in the forty-three years since the treaty created it and was not on the agenda when the community’s justice ministers met in July 2026, and to the Central African monetary community, whose court is real but has consistently refused jurisdiction over member states’ domestic acts. Neither has a court outside its borders.

Eswatini had one and lost it. The SADC Tribunal took cases from individuals until the Community suspended it in 2010 and 2011 and resolved in 2012 to replace it with a body confined to disputes between states. The replacement protocol of 2014 does not mention individuals anywhere in its text, is not in force, and Eswatini did not sign it. Eswatini never ratified the African Court Protocol either. What remains is the COMESA Court at Lusaka, whose treaty lets any resident of a member state challenge that state’s acts as an infringement of the treaty, but which requires local remedies to be exhausted first and has never in about forty-five decisions decided anything about detention, deportation or expulsion. That is untested, not open.

Africa

The Americas and the Caribbean

Europe, Central Asia and the Pacific

States considered and not included

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

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

The United States is not the only state to have sought to send people it will not return home to a third country instead. The United Kingdom and Australia have both done so, both have had the arrangements tested in their highest courts, and in both the legislature responded to the court. Their experience bears on the United States programme in two ways: as a comparison of what courts have found when they examined a receiving state’s conditions, and as a warning about what follows when a court’s finding is overridden by statute.

United Kingdom: Rwanda

In November 2023 the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom held that the government’s policy of removing asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful. The court found, as reported, that there were substantial grounds for believing that persons removed to Rwanda would face a real risk of refoulement from Rwanda to their countries of origin.¹ The finding did not rest on a conclusion that Rwanda would itself mistreat them; it rested on what Rwanda would foreseeably do with them next. That is the same structure as the question this project asks about every receiving state.

Parliament responded with the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024. As reported, the Act declared Rwanda to be a safe country, contrary to the court’s findings; provided that a court or tribunal must not consider a claim that Rwanda is not safe; permitted courts to consider evidence relating only to a person’s particular individual circumstances; and disapplied parts of the Human Rights Act.² The Act was challenged. In SM and Asylum Aid v. Home Secretary, the claimants argued that the provision on individual circumstances does not prevent a decision-maker from considering whether there is a real risk that a person removed to Rwanda would be sent onward to an unsafe third country.³ That is, in terms, the chain refoulement question, litigated under a statute designed to close it.

In June 2025 the United States concluded a memorandum of understanding with Rwanda and began transferring people there in August 2025.⁴ Whatever the differences between the two schemes, a court of final appeal in a comparable legal system examined this destination and reached a conclusion about onward refoulement from it. That is a fact a reader considering a transfer to Rwanda should have.

Australia: indefinite detention and the third country

In November 2023 the High Court of Australia held unanimously in NZYQ v. Minister for Immigration that indefinite immigration detention is unconstitutional, because detention that cannot end in removal is punitive and punishment may be ordered only by a court. The period of permissible executive detention ends, the court held, when there is no real prospect of removal becoming practicable in the reasonably foreseeable future.⁵ The decision overturned a precedent that had stood for nearly twenty years, and it states in Australian constitutional terms the principle that Zadvydas states in United States statutory terms.

Parliament’s first response, legislation imposing strict conditions on the people released, was itself struck down by the High Court as punitive, as reported. In November 2024 Parliament passed laws permitting the government to deport people to third countries that are not their countries of origin.⁶ Australia therefore now has a third-country removal regime of its own, enacted as the response to a court’s finding that people who cannot be removed cannot be held indefinitely. Whether that regime has been tested in the High Court is not yet confirmed in the sources available to the Coalition.

Australia’s earlier offshore processing arrangements, on Nauru and on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, are the best-known third-country schemes of the past two decades. The Coalition has not yet verified the decisions of the High Court of Australia and the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea concerning those arrangements to the standard this project requires, and will add them when it has.

The treaty body: M.T. v. Sweden

The Committee against Torture’s decision of November 2024 in M.T. v. Sweden is described under The Law. It is the most direct international authority for the proposition that a transfer to a country which will foreseeably send the person onward violates Article 3, and it was decided on facts in which the intermediate country, Kosovo, was not itself characterised as a place of torture.⁷ Kosovo is among the states to which the United States has since transferred people.

The European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights has a substantial body of decisions on transfer to a third country and on the responsibility of the sending state for what follows. The Coalition has not yet verified those decisions to the standard this project requires and does not summarise them here. They will be added when they have been read.

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

References

1. R (AAA (Syria) and others) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] UKSC 42 (15 November 2023). Judgment at BAILII.
2. Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, as described in Institute for Government, explainer and Kingsley Napley, analysis.
3. SM and Asylum Aid v. Home Secretary. Judgment, Courts and Tribunals Judiciary.
4. See The Countries, Rwanda.
5. NZYQ v. Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs [2023] HCA 37 (28 November 2023). Judgment at AustLII.
6. As described at Asylum Insight, NZYQ; see also International Journal of Refugee Law.
7. Committee against Torture, M.T. v. Sweden, CAT/C/81/D/1109/2021 (8 November 2024). UN Digital Library.

The law described in this project turns on what happens to a person after he arrives in a third country. This section collects the cases in which that is documented: a named person, or an identified group, whose treatment after transfer is recorded in a court filing, a monitoring report, or the reporting of a named news organisation. Each entry states its source. Where the Coalition has the source document, it is linked. Where it has only the report of the source, the entry says so, and the document will be linked when it is obtained.

Jorge Felix Ibarra-Perez: two days in Mexico

A Cuban national who entered the United States at Nogales in September 2019. On 10 January 2020 an immigration judge ordered him removed, denied asylum under the transit ban then in force, and granted withholding of removal to Cuba. On 16 January 2020 he was removed to Mexico, a country never designated in his order. He was threatened by gang members, and was back at the Mariposa port of entry on 17 January. On 16 March 2020 the immigration judge reopened his proceedings on due process grounds. On 16 July 2020 he was granted asylum.¹

He later sued the United States for damages. A district court dismissed the suit for want of jurisdiction in January 2024. In August 2025 the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that his challenge to the post-hearing selection of Mexico was not barred; in June 2026 the court declined to rehear the case en banc over a dissent joined by twelve judges.² The government’s own adjudicator, given the hearing that had been skipped, found him entitled to more protection than he held when he was put across the border.

C.O.: three countries

Monitoring organisations report the case of a man holding protection under the Convention against El Salvador who was sent by the United States to Mexico, transferred by Mexican officials to Guatemala, and moved by Guatemala to El Salvador, where he was detained and threatened with confinement at CECOT.³ The Coalition has the report; it does not yet have the underlying filing. If the account is confirmed, it records a chain of three countries ending in the one his protection concerned.

Ghana: twenty-four hours

Human Rights First reports that a Nigerian woman holding United States withholding of removal was sent to Ghana and returned by Ghana to Nigeria within approximately twenty-four hours.⁴ In separate litigation, five plaintiffs holding withholding or protection under the Convention were transported to Ghana; Ghana began returning them to the countries their protection concerned; one had already been sent onward when the case was filed. The court denied emergency relief, largely because the plaintiffs were in Ghanaian custody and a United States court cannot order a foreign government to keep them or not to deport them. It did not reach the question of whether the transfer had been lawful.⁵

Equatorial Guinea: twenty-nine of twenty-nine

Reuters reported that persons transferred from the United States were confined in a government-controlled hotel in Malabo with restricted movement and access. Monitoring organisations report that all twenty-nine persons in the first two cohorts were ultimately returned to their home countries, including persons who had held United States protection. In April 2026 United Nations special procedures, with the participation of the mandate on torture, addressed the situation of persons deported from the United States and detained in Malabo.⁶

Sierra Leone: told on arrival

Monitoring organisations report that the first group transferred to Sierra Leone consisted largely of persons holding United States protection, and that arrivals were told Sierra Leone was a temporary transit location, that long-term settlement was not permitted, and that the authorities would return them to their home countries. Many are reported to have been subsequently returned. The Associated Press independently reported protected asylum seekers facing return to the countries they feared.⁷

Cameroon: the instrument’s two clauses

The arrangement with Cameroon is reported to prohibit onward refoulement and, in the same document, to contemplate assisted voluntary returns supported by the United States. Monitoring organisations report that numerous transferees held withholding or protection under the Convention, that protected transferees were detained or pressed toward repatriation, and that at least one person holding withholding returned to Morocco and is in hiding.⁸ The Coalition has not seen the instrument. When it has, the two clauses will be quoted here side by side.

Democratic Republic of the Congo: fifteen

Fifteen third-country nationals are reported transferred on 17 April 2026, all or nearly all holding United States protection against return to their countries of origin. A majority are reported to have subsequently returned to their countries through assisted-return arrangements. A Colombian national holding protection described being pressed to decide whether to return while holding only temporary status and lacking identity documents.⁹

Uganda: two of eight

Eight asylum seekers from Mauritania, Angola, Ethiopia, Mali, Togo and Guinea are reported transferred on 2 April 2026. By July, two had received refugee status in Uganda, four had returned to their countries, one had left Uganda, and one was awaiting repatriation.¹⁰ This is the case that shows a receiving state can grant status to some of the people sent to it while most go home, and it is why this project makes no claim about the programme as a whole that Uganda would refute.

Eswatini: after the sentence

Amnesty International documented arrivals at the Matsapha Correctional Complex in July 2025, October 2025 and March 2026, of men with no ties to Eswatini, under an arrangement reported to provide for up to 160 persons and $5.1 million in United States funding. Some transferred persons are reported to have remained in detention after completing sentences in the United States.¹¹

Kilmar Abrego Garcia: a withholding order, and El Salvador

A man holding withholding of removal against El Salvador was removed to El Salvador and held at CECOT. The government conceded before the Supreme Court that the removal was unlawful. The Court held that the district court’s order properly required the government to facilitate his release from foreign custody and to handle his case as if the removal had not occurred.¹² The district court later ordered seventy-two hours’ written notice to him and his counsel of any intended third country before any further removal.

Maher Arar: the choice, in the reports

The published opinion in Arar v. Ashcroft records that Arar was offered a choice between removal to Syria, where he feared torture, and remaining in detention. He was sent, by way of Jordan, to Syria. His claims were dismissed on jurisdictional and other grounds, and no court ruled on whether presenting him with that choice was lawful.¹³ The case is two decades old. It is included because it records, in a federal court’s own opinion, the fact pattern that the constructive refoulement concept describes.

Wang Zong Xiao: once, a court said no

In 1993 a federal district court found that the government, having brought a Chinese witness to the United States to testify and having placed him in a position where truthful testimony meant execution on return, had forced him into a Hobson’s choice that shocked the conscience, and it permanently enjoined his return to Chinese custody. The Ninth Circuit affirmed in 1996. The court later set release conditions and ordered the issuance of immigration documentation.¹⁴ No court has extended the decision beyond a government witness, and one asked to do so declined. It is included because it is the one case in which a federal court barred a return to torture on substantive constitutional grounds, and the injunction stands.

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

References

1. Ibarra-Perez v. United States, 154 F.4th 989 (9th Cir. 2025), Justia; Ibarra-Perez v. Howard, No. CV-20-00739-PHX-DWL (D. Ariz. 2020); Ibarra-Perez v. United States, No. CV-22-01100 (D. Ariz. 19 Jan. 2024).
2. Order denying rehearing en banc, No. 24-631 (9th Cir. 25 June 2026). CourtListener.
3. As reported by monitoring organisations.
4. Human Rights First.
5. D.A. v. Noem, as reported.
6. Reuters; monitoring organisations; United Nations special procedures communication, April 2026.
7. Monitoring organisations; Associated Press.
8. Monitoring organisations.
9. Monitoring organisations.
10. Al Jazeera, 2 April 2026; monitoring organisations.
11. Amnesty International, 11 March 2026; Human Rights Watch, 23 September 2025.
12. Noem v. Abrego Garcia, No. 24A949 (U.S. 7 Apr. 2025). Cornell.
13. Arar v. Ashcroft, 414 F. Supp. 2d 250 (E.D.N.Y. 2006); 585 F.3d 559 (2d Cir. 2009).
14. Wang Zong Xiao v. Reno, 837 F. Supp. 1506 (N.D. Cal. 1993); 81 F.3d 808 (9th Cir. 1996); 930 F. Supp. 1377 (N.D. Cal. 1996).

Everything this project states rests on a source listed here. Links are to the text of the instrument or the opinion of the court wherever a public copy exists. Where an item is listed without a link, the Coalition has the citation but has not yet located a public copy, and will add one when it does. Items marked “as reported” are recent court orders known to the Coalition from dockets and from the organisations monitoring the programme rather than from a published opinion.

Treaties and international instruments

• Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984), arts. 2, 3, 4, 16, 22. Text at OHCHR.
• Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (2002), arts. 1, 4, 19, 20. Text at OHCHR.
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), arts. 7, 9. Text at OHCHR.
• Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (1951), art. 33. Text at UNHCR.
• Committee against Torture, General Comment No. 4 (2017) on the implementation of article 3 in the context of article 22, CAT/C/GC/4. OHCHR.
• Human Rights Committee, General Comment No. 31 (2004), CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.13, para. 12.
• International Law Commission, Draft Articles on the Expulsion of Aliens (2014), art. 10; Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (2001), art. 16.

Decisions of United Nations bodies

• Committee against Torture, Turhan v. Sweden, communication No. 1109/2021, CAT/C/81/D/1109/2021 (8 November 2024). UN Digital Library; Report of the Committee against Torture, A/80/44.
• Committee against Torture, Agiza v. Sweden, communication No. 233/2003 (2005). Refworld.
• Human Rights Committee, Alzery v. Sweden, communication No. 1416/2005 (2006).
• Communication of United Nations special procedures to the United States concerning third-country transfers (2026). OHCHR.
• Joint statement of seven special procedures mandates, 8 July 2025. OHCHR.
• Special Rapporteur on torture, statement of 28 July 2026. OHCHR; position paper on non-refoulement, PDF.
• Special procedures communications concerning Equatorial Guinea (April 2026) and El Salvador (2025).
• OHCHR treaty body database, concluding observations by state. Database.

United States statutes and regulations

• 8 U.S.C. § 1231(a)(1), (a)(3), (a)(6), (b)(2)(A)–(E), (b)(3)(A)–(B). Cornell.
• 8 U.S.C. § 1252(a)(2)(C)–(D), (a)(5), (b)(4)(B), (b)(9), (g). Cornell.
• 8 U.S.C. § 1158(a)(2)(A). Cornell.
• Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, Pub. L. No. 105-277, div. G, tit. XXII, § 2242, 112 Stat. 2681-822 (8 U.S.C. § 1231 note).
• 8 C.F.R. § 1208.16. Cornell.
• 8 C.F.R. § 1208.17. Cornell.
• 8 C.F.R. § 1208.18. Cornell.
• 8 C.F.R. §§ 241.4, 241.5, 241.13. Cornell.
• 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A). Cornell.

Supreme Court of the United States

• Jama v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 543 U.S. 335 (2005). Cornell.
• Nasrallah v. Barr, 590 U.S. 573 (2020). Opinion (PDF).
• Johnson v. Guzman Chavez, 594 U.S. 523 (2021).
• Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678 (2001). Cornell.
• INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421 (1987).
• Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, 525 U.S. 471 (1999).
• INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289 (2001).
• Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U.S. 281 (2018).
• Munaf v. Geren, 553 U.S. 674 (2008).
• Noem v. Abrego Garcia, No. 24A949 (7 Apr. 2025). Cornell.
• DHS v. D.V.D., No. 24A1153 (23 June 2025) (stay). Application (PDF); Opposition (PDF).

Courts of appeals

• Ibarra-Perez v. United States, 154 F.4th 989 (9th Cir. 2025). Justia; Ninth Circuit (PDF); order denying rehearing en banc, 25 June 2026, FindLaw.
• Khouzam v. Attorney General, 549 F.3d 235 (3d Cir. 2008). CourtListener.
• Kamara v. Attorney General, 420 F.3d 202 (3d Cir. 2005). Justia.
• Enwonwu v. Gonzales, 438 F.3d 22 (1st Cir. 2006).
• Vicente-Elias v. Mukasey, 532 F.3d 1086 (10th Cir. 2008).
• Orantes-Hernandez v. Thornburgh, 919 F.2d 549 (9th Cir. 1990). Justia.
• Wang Zong Xiao v. Reno, 81 F.3d 808 (9th Cir. 1996).
• Omar v. McHugh, 646 F.3d 13 (D.C. Cir. 2011).
• Mironescu v. Costner, 480 F.3d 664 (4th Cir. 2007).
• Garcia v. Thomas, 683 F.3d 952 (9th Cir. 2012).
• Cornejo-Barreto v. Siefert, 379 F.3d 1075 (9th Cir. 2004).
• Ogbudimkpa v. Ashcroft, 342 F.3d 207 (3d Cir. 2003).
• Singh v. Gonzales, 499 F.3d 969 (9th Cir. 2007).
• J.E.F.M. v. Lynch, 837 F.3d 1026 (9th Cir. 2016); C.J.L.G. v. Barr, 923 F.3d 622 (9th Cir. 2019) (en banc).
• Velasquez-Samayoa v. Garland, 49 F.4th 1149 (9th Cir. 2022).
• Parada Calderon v. Blanche (9th Cir. 28 Aug. 2026), as reported.
• Doe v. Mattis, 928 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2018).
• Arar v. Ashcroft, 585 F.3d 559 (2d Cir. 2009).
• Ragbir v. Homan (2d Cir. 2019).
• Hoxhallari v. Gonzales, 468 F.3d 179 (2d Cir. 2006); Makaj v. Mukasey, 319 F. App’x 507 (9th Cir. 2009).
• United States v. Scott, 424 F.3d 888 (9th Cir. 2005).
• Flores ex rel. Galvez-Maldonado v. Meese, 942 F.2d 1352 (9th Cir. 1991).

Board of Immigration Appeals and Attorney General

• Matter of J-F-F-, 23 I. & N. Dec. 912 (A.G. 2006). Department of Justice (PDF).
• Matter of I-S- & C-S-, 24 I. & N. Dec. 432 (BIA 2008).
• Matter of A-S-M- (BIA 9 Apr. 2021).
• Matter of M-A-S-, 24 I. & N. Dec. 762 (BIA 2009).

District courts

• D.V.D. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 25-cv-10676 (D. Mass.): class certification and preliminary injunction order, April 2025 (PDF); final judgment 25 Feb. 2026; plaintiffs’ reply in support of summary judgment, March 2026 (PDF).
• Avila Castillo v. Chestnut, No. 1:25-cv-01296-SAB-HC (E.D. Cal. 16 Jan. 2026), as reported.
• Karapetyan v. Warden of Otay Mesa Detention Center, No. 3:26-cv-00697 (S.D. Cal. 10 June 2026), as reported.
• Maldonado-Lux v. Hernandez (W.D. Wash. 5 Aug. 2026), as reported.
• Kumar v. Wamsley, No. 2:26-cv-00294 (W.D. Wash. 2026), as reported.
• Shahi v. Noem (E.D. Cal. 27 July 2026); Esmaeili v. Noem (S.D. Cal. 2026); Yang v. Kaiser, No. 2:25-cv-02205 (E.D. Cal. 20 Aug. 2025); Y.T.D. v. Andrews, No. 1:25-cv-01100 (E.D. Cal. 18 Sept. 2025); Perez Canet v. Blanche, 2026 WL 1091763 (D. Nev. 22 Apr. 2026); all as reported.
• Khazanov v. Bullock, No. 3:26-cv-00401 (E.D. Va. 2026), as reported.
• Abghari v. Hermosillo, No. 2:26-cv-00269 (W.D. Wash. 2026), as reported; order in Hernandez Menendez (M.D. Fla. 2026), court document; T.A. v. Sage (M.D. Pa. 2025–2026), as reported.
• D.A. v. Noem (Ghana), as reported.
• Ibarra-Perez v. Howard, No. CV-20-00739-PHX-DWL (D. Ariz. 23 June 2020); Ibarra-Perez v. United States, No. CV-22-01100 (D. Ariz. 19 Jan. 2024).
• Ali v. Barlow, 446 F. Supp. 2d 604 (E.D. Va. 2006).
• Khouzam v. Hogan, 529 F. Supp. 2d 543 (M.D. Pa. 2008); 497 F. Supp. 2d 615 (M.D. Pa. 2007).
• Jimenez v. Nielsen, 334 F. Supp. 3d 370 (D.D.C. 2018); Compere v. Nielsen, 358 F. Supp. 3d 170 (D.N.H. 2019).
• Perez-Funez v. District Director, 619 F. Supp. 656 (C.D. Cal. 1985); Hamama v. Adducci, 349 F. Supp. 3d 665 (E.D. Mich. 2018); El Badrawi v. United States, 787 F. Supp. 2d 204 (D. Conn. 2011); Tam v. INS, 14 F. Supp. 2d 1184 (E.D. Cal. 1998).
• Arar v. Ashcroft, 414 F. Supp. 2d 250 (E.D.N.Y. 2006); Omar v. Geren, 689 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2009).
• Wang Zong Xiao v. Reno, 837 F. Supp. 1506 (N.D. Cal. 1993); 930 F. Supp. 1377 (N.D. Cal. 1996); 963 F. Supp. 874 (N.D. Cal. 1997); Saba v. INS, 52 F. Supp. 2d 1117 (N.D. Cal. 1999); Ramos v. Nielsen (N.D. Cal. 2018).
• Calderon v. Sessions, 330 F. Supp. 3d 944 (S.D. Ill. 2018).

Other jurisdictions

• R (AAA (Syria) and others) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] UKSC 42. BAILII.
• SM and Asylum Aid v. Home Secretary. Judiciary.
• NZYQ v. Minister for Immigration [2023] HCA 37. AustLII.

Government documents

• U.S. Department of Homeland Security, memorandum on third-country removals, 30 March 2025, filed as ECF No. 43-1 in D.V.D. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, No. 1:25-cv-10676 (D. Mass.), exhibit (PDF); U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, guidance on third-country removals, 9 July 2025, filed in the same case as ECF No. 190-1, exhibit (PDF). On 25 February 2026 the District of Massachusetts held the third-country removal policy embodied in these documents to be unlawful and set it aside, holding that it is contrary to 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(2) and (3). The First Circuit stayed that judgment pending appeal on 16 March 2026, one judge of three dissenting, and heard argument on 13 May 2026. No decision had issued as at 9 September 2026, so both documents remain in force. The sequence is set out in the Coalition’s report, A Federal Court Set the Third-Country Removal Policy Aside. It Is Not in Force.
• U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2023 (index) and 2024 (index); individual reports linked in each country profile.

Monitoring and reporting

• U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Third Country Deportations tracker. Tracker.
• Human Rights First and Refugees International, monitoring of third-country arrangements.
• Human Rights Watch, “US/Africa: Expulsion Deals Flout Rights,” 23 September 2025. HRW.
• Amnesty International on Eswatini: 11 March 2026; April 2026; July 2026.
• Al Jazeera, “Legal groups condemn arrival of a dozen deportees from US to Uganda,” 2 April 2026. Al Jazeera.
• American Immigration Council, fact sheet on third-country removals. AIC.
• Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, motion for summary judgment (N.D. Cal., 14 Aug. 2025), discussing chain refoulement from Mexico. PDF.
• Associated Press, Reuters and CBS News reporting cited in the country profiles.

This page lists sources. It is not legal advice. The Coalition does not represent individuals. Organisations that do are listed under Where to Find Help.

The Coalition documents and educates. It does not give legal advice and it does not represent individuals. A person facing removal to a third country, or someone helping him, needs a lawyer, and needs one before the transfer takes place, because nothing described in this project can be done afterwards. This page names organisations that provide representation and the international bodies that receive complaints.

Why before, not after

The reasons are set out under Start Here and The Law, and they come down to one fact. Once a person has been delivered to another government, what the courts of the United States can do becomes sharply constrained: in one reported case, a federal court denied relief to five protected persons already in Ghanaian custody because it could not order Ghana to do anything. It is constrained, not exhausted. On 10 April 2025 the Supreme Court held in Noem v. Abrego Garcia that a district court had properly required the United States government to “facilitate” the release of a man already removed to El Salvador, and to ensure his case was handled as it would have been had he not been wrongly sent, while sending the case back for clarification of how far such an order may reach. A United States court cannot command the receiving state. It can sometimes order the United States itself to act. Government guidance has reportedly set the notice period before a transfer at twenty-four hours and in some circumstances six. Whatever is to be done has to be done within that interval, and it has to be done by someone with the standing and the knowledge to do it.

Legal representation in the United States

The Coalition’s general Resources directory lists organisations providing legal aid in the United States and internationally. The organisations below appear in that directory and work on immigration detention and removal. The Coalition does not endorse any organisation and has no arrangement with any of them; the list is for orientation.

• National Immigrant Justice Center: legal services to immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees, including persons in immigration detention.
• ACLU National Prison Project: litigation concerning conditions of detention and custodial abuse.
• Center for Constitutional Rights: constitutional and international human rights litigation.
• Physicians for Human Rights: medical documentation of torture for use in legal proceedings.

International bodies that receive complaints

The following bodies receive communications concerning torture and refoulement. Whether a particular route is available in a particular case depends on the states involved and on procedural conditions the Coalition does not assess here.

• Committee against Torture: receives individual communications under article 22 of the Convention from persons subject to the jurisdiction of a State Party that has accepted the procedure. The United States has not accepted article 22; some receiving states have. The list of declarations is maintained by OHCHR.
• Special Rapporteur on torture and the other special procedures of the Human Rights Council: receive information and may issue urgent appeals to any state, irrespective of treaty acceptance. Special procedures have addressed the United States programme, and transfers to Equatorial Guinea and El Salvador, in 2025 and 2026.
• Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture and the national preventive mechanisms established under the Optional Protocol: hold the right of access to any place where persons are deprived of liberty in a State Party, which includes a facility holding transferred persons. The Coalition’s work on national preventive mechanisms is described under What We Do.
• Inter-American Commission on Human Rights: receives petitions and requests for precautionary measures concerning states of the Americas, including the United States and most of the receiving states in this hemisphere.

Documentation

Organisations that document individual cases of transfer and its aftermath include those listed under Sources. A person who has been transferred, or a family member or representative, and who wishes to have a case recorded, can contact the Coalition. The Coalition records cases for documentation and reporting; it does not take them on.

This page describes organisations and bodies. It is not legal advice, and listing an organisation is not a referral. The Coalition does not represent individuals.