How Trump turned a refugee bureau into a $410 million deportation operation
As part of a consortium of 26 media outlets coordinated by Forbidden Stories, FRANCE 24 and RFI spent seven months investigating the secret deals struck between the administration of US President Donald Trump and several African countries. These “third countries” have agreed to host undocumented migrants detained by ICE and deported from the United States.
Investigating the brutal methods of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) can expose journalists to legal action, detention and even deportation.
On June 14, 2025, Salvadoran reporter Mario Guevara experienced those risks firsthand. Guevara was detained while covering a protest against ICE in Atlanta, Georgia, as part of broader demonstrations against US President Donald Trump. He was deported to El Salvador four months later.
To continue and to defend this crucial work, the Forbidden Stories network of journalists launched a wide-reaching investigation called “The Deportation Project: Revelations about the Trump administration’s mass deportations”.
More than a hundred interviews, 72 journalists, 15 countries.
Since January 2025, more than 25,400 foreigners have been deported from the US to countries that most of them have never set foot in before. Most of them had been granted legal protections preventing them from being sent back to their home countries, where they were deemed at risk of persecution. Тo get around this measure, the Trump administration struck deals with 35 “third countries” who would agree to receive these deportees. What these countries received in return remains largely unclear – the negotiations leading up to them were largely secret.
Some of those people lived in the US for decades – they worked there, paid their taxes, started families and built their lives. Now, these newly stateless people risk detention, ill-treatment or being sent back to their home countries, where their lives would once again be in danger.
He has been making rapid progress. The Trump administration has authorized or pledged at least $410 million to facilitate agreements with 31 countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America, as of the end of June, according to internal government records reviewed by The Washington Post. The documents, which have not been previously reported, provide the most comprehensive picture to date of the Trump administration’s fast-growing third-country network.
Early deals included flights to Costa Rica carrying migrants from China, Russia, Iran and Afghanistan and a flight to the tiny African kingdom of Eswatini with migrants from Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and Jamaica.
The agreements have been secured under the orders of Stephen Miller, a long-standing aide to the president who now serves as White House deputy chief of staff. Current and former officials say that Miller, known for his relentless anti-immigration focus, has been able to push key appointments at the State Department that have allowed him to overrule other foreign policy objectives in his goal of achieving more deportations.
