Peace and Justice Post

As the Trump administration fights to keep deporting immigrants to countries where they have no connections, we studied the system that profits from these grave abuses.

Tyler McBrien

The Intercept, September 29, 2026, 11:00 a.m. ET Share

Tyler McBrien is the managing editor of Lawfare.

More than 25,000 people have had their lives upended and been forced into unfamiliar cultures, governments, and legal systems when the Department of Homeland Security deported them to so-called “third countries,” places where immigrants previously living in the United States have no connections and few rights — and where a deportation business booming under the second Trump administration finds its murky endpoints.

“The point is to scare people,” said one Trump administration official, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee minority report. “With countries like Palau or Eswatini, the point is that the Administration can threaten people that they will literally be dropped in the middle of nowhere.”

As is the case for many tools of its cruelty, the Trump administration did not invent third-country removals — it refashioned them to serve its own excesses. In the past, the U.S. used the obscure administrative compromise for people who could prove they would face persecution or harm if returned to their home country yet did not meet other requirements for asylum. The U.S. had to meet humanitarian and legal obligations, such as ensuring third countries would not turn around and deport migrants right back to their home countries. It was a last-resort tool that still left people displaced from their homes and communities in service of the country’s arcane immigration laws. But the current Trump administration’s policy, premised on agreements with at least 35 countries, has been anything but humane.

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Nor has it been particularly legal. After the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the third-country deportation scheme, DHS scheduled a flight to deport migrants involved in a class-action lawsuit challenging the policy to Burundi, Rwanda, and the Central African Republic. Despite a successful emergency motion their lawyers filed last week, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement jet flew to two African countries that hold third-country removal agreements, according to the American Prospect. It is not yet clear who was on the plane or whether ICE carried out third-country removals in violation of a federal court order, and the Trump administration is now aiming to take the legal fight to the Supreme Court.

The saga illustrates the Trump administration’s proclivity for obfuscation, secret contracts, nondisclosure, and dealmaking of the backroom variety. Whether digitally disappearing people from ICE’s online detainee locator tool last week, or inking multimillion-dollar sole-source contracts with inexperienced companies of questionable provenance, the Trump administration has pursued its immigration goals under the cover of darkness, often justifying the secrecy with invocations of national security, all while attempting to shield itself from public scrutiny and accountability in the process.

“Deportation, Inc.: The Rise of the Immigration Enforcement Economy,” an ongoing investigative video series from Lawfare and SITU Research, in partnership with The Intercept, examines how U.S. immigration enforcement has evolved into a multibillion-dollar industry shaped by private profit and political power — where contracts, capital flows, and institutional incentives increasingly govern detention, deportation, and surveillance. The project joins other efforts to shed light on the often invisible economy of immigration enforcement, including the Berkeley Human Rights Center, Human Rights First, Third Country Deportation Watch, and others.

The first installment, released last December, focuses on the business of migrant detention and profit motive underpinning the brutality of privately run ICE detention facilities. The second chapter, out today, looks at the network of flights shuffling migrants between those facilities, as well as the shady deals brokered with the governments of deportation destinations.

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Many details of these bilateral third-country removal agreements are not public, but the logic is transactional: Countries accept asylum-seekers and other immigrants from the United States in exchange for aid or other forms of financial compensation. Many of the countries involved in what The Intercept’s Nick Turse has called Trump’s “global gulag” are so dangerous that the State Department includes them on its “Level 4 Do Not Travel” list, “the highest advisory level due to life-threatening risks. And the very fact that these people are sent to a third country, rather than repatriated, means they have at least a viable asylum case.

Some but not all of the underlying texts of these agreements have come to light, often popping up in far-flung corners of the internet. This is not only a bad practice in government transparency, but a potentially illegal one as well. Lawfare, where I serve as managing editor, has argued as much in a federal district court in Washington, D.C., where the publication has sued the State Department over its failure to disclose international agreements into which the Trump administration has entered — in violation of the Case-Zablocki Act.

Though accelerated by the Trump administration, the secrecy that has enabled the growth of the vast, invisible economy of immigration enforcement traces back to at least 2001 with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Following the September 11 attacks, the new Cabinet-level department, along with other federal reforms, for the first time linked immigration with national security, which resulted in massive budget increases, new abilities to shield immigration information from the public, and general judicial deference to the executive branch that accompanies matters of foreign policy and national security.

Even the current Trump administration’s third-country deportation apparatus is beginning to build up its own record of cruel precedent. In the same class-action case last year, the Department of Homeland Security attempted to deport class members to Libya and South Sudan, in apparent violation of a temporary restraining order granted by a federal judge only weeks prior. During a hastily arranged hearing, a federal judge asked a Justice Department lawyer about the plane’s whereabouts, to which the government attorney responded, “I’m told that that information is classified, and I am told that the final destination is also classified.” Asked under what authority the government had classified the location, the Justice Department lawyer did not have an answer.

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Contact the author:

Tyler McBrien tyler.mcbrien@gmail.com @TylerMcBrien on X

WSWS, Jacob Crosse, 7 Sep 2026

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on Wednesday, September 2 that it had set a record for the number of arrests of immigrants for the third straight month. The department, which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), claimed it kidnapped 50,925 people in August, exceeding the nearly 50,000 the month before and the 49,000 in June.

“For the third straight month, ICE set a new record for the highest number of illegal aliens arrested in a single month, nearly 51,000,” Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin gloated in a DHS press release.

DHS claims over 3 million people have left the country since Trump returned to the White House. This includes those who were deported, illegally renditioned to a third country, or, under threat of being kidnapped and held in a for-profit concentration camp, “voluntarily” left the country.

While the Trump administration scapegoats immigrants for all the problems created by the capitalist system—from rising home prices and stagnant wages to every form of criminality—ICE arrest data analyzed by Cato Institute immigration analyst David Bier showed that 79 percent of those arrested had no criminal conviction. Fifty-five percent had neither a conviction nor a pending criminal charge, while only 4 percent had been convicted of a violent offense. Bier testified before the House Judiciary Committee last week.

The assault on immigrants is part of a broader attack by the ruling class directed against the entire working class. Under conditions where the national debt has soared past $40 trillion and workers and young people are increasingly interested in socialist politics, the US government is criminalizing opposition and making people “illegal” who had lived legally in the country for years.

In July, the Trump administration terminated Temporary Protected Status for some 350,000 Haitian immigrants, and TPS protection is scheduled to end for roughly 170,000 Salvadorans on September 9.

In Springfield, Ohio, some Haitian immigrants have gone underground while more than 100 have been fitted with GPS trackers, typically reserved for violent felons under criminal supervision. ICE has imposed restrictions on many Haitians as to where they can travel or if they can leave the state.

One of the Haitians fitted with the equivalent of a modern-day yellow star, Wright State University college student Pierre Damas Bel, died August 31 in what his family calls a suicide, when he was struck by a tractor trailer on Interstate 70 near Springfield.

“After my son was outfitted with an ankle monitor, he felt like he was treated like an animal,” his father, Pierre Ronal Bel, said in a written statement. “He took two trips to Cincinnati and Westerville to plead with the officers to remove the bracelet since he’s a soccer player and he felt embarrassed and humiliated. When he’s among his classmates at the university—he’s a student at Wright State—he was bullied a lot with a lot of people telling him he’s a criminal.”

In a July 30 Instagram carousel post, Pierre Damas Bel highlighted his accomplishments and spoke in defense of immigrants and Haitians.

“I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone,” he wrote.

Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience. I came here to study, to build my future and to live a better [life], not to be treated like a criminal. So now, how am I supposed to play college sports with a GPS monitor on my leg?

On Thursday, the Trump administration carried out its third consecutive weekly deportation flight to Haiti since TPS ended, and at least the 11th flight this year. The flight originated in Alexandria, Louisiana and landed in Cap-Haïtien with 101 deportees aboard, according to a Haitian Foreign Affairs Ministry official.

In a fascistic post celebrating the deportation, DHS Secretary Mullin shared an image on X featuring black men in chains, with the caption, “Good morning, America. Today’s deportation destination: HAITI.”

Haiti remains under a State Department Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory due to “crime, kidnapping, terrorism, unrest and limited healthcare.” As the World Socialist Web Site previously reported, war criminal and Trump ally Erik Prince’s private military company Vectus Global is carrying out an undeclared drone war with Haitian government forces against the population, which has resulted in over 1,000 deaths.

As ICE is increasing its kidnapping operations, resistance is growing among workers, students and community members throughout the country.

Last Wednesday, September 2, more than 1,000 people protested against ICE kidnapping operations in Danbury, Connecticut. In the week prior, Connecticut Mirror reported that ICE had taken over 100 people in the state, a majority from Danbury. The town is located about 50 miles north of New York City and is home to just under 90,000 people.

Residents report that ICE thugs have been going after immigrants at work, while shopping for groceries and even while dropping off their kids at school bus stops. Juliana Soares, a lead organizer of the group “Danbury Unites for Immigrants,” told NBC that at least 65 families in the community had been impacted by ICE operations.

Speaking with Amy Goodman on “Democracy Now!,” Soares surmised that Danbury was being targeted by ICE because “Danbury is a diverse city, it’s one of the most diverse cities in the country.” Roughly one third of the city’s population is Latino, according to the US Census Bureau, including a large Brazilian population.

Describing the police terror, Soares said, “The streets were empty, kids stayed home from practice, kids stayed home from school, kids were seeing [their parents taken] from inside the bus, as agents, masked agents often, would shut down the street to just abduct people.”

In Colorado on Friday, September 4, students from more than 200 high schools throughout the state walked out of class to protest attacks on immigrants. Walkouts featuring dozens to hundreds of students occurred in Denver, the surrounding suburbs, Colorado Springs and, significantly, Greeley, where some 3,800 meatpacking workers went on strike earlier this year in the largest meatpacking struggle in decades.

A majority of the workers at the JBS plant in Greeley are immigrants, with dozens of languages spoken inside the plant. During the strike, a worker at the plant told WSWS reporters, “We represent the immigrants and all the people of color. That’s us, that’s the people that are doing these jobs.

“Without immigrants, there is no food, there is no work.”

Video from Friday’s protest in Greeley shows students marching while chanting, “Get ICE out!” Students carried handmade signs that read, “Immigrants make America great!” and “Abolish ICE.”

In an interview with the Greeley Tribune, Greeley Central High School student Josely Vazquez said, “People shouldn’t be scared to leave their houses.” Vazquez is originally from Mexico and moved to Greeley when she was 9.

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The students marched to Lincoln Park. Along the way, drivers honked in support and flew flags from many countries, including Mexico and Palestine.

In Denver, hundreds of students rallied at La Alma-Lincoln Park to protest ICE kidnapping operations. In an interview with ColoradoNewsline, 15-year-old student Macy Brown said, “I think human rights are really important, and I think we all need to speak up against injustices that are happening right in front of us.”

Naya Ferguson, a 16-year-old student at Bear Creek High School in Jefferson County, said she drove to the park to attend the protest after seeing students walking out of her school. She told ColoradoNewsLine, “What ICE is doing is just unconstitutional, unlawful. It’s inhumane, and I just don’t want to sit back and just watch it happen. It’s not who I am.”

On Friday, on the other side of the country, in Fredrick, Maryland, ICE thugs, with police watching, bludgeoned and assaulted non-violent protesters who had formed a human chain around a house targeted by the immigration Gestapo. Residents and local reporters claim ICE began menacing residents in Fredrick on Monday, August 31, and specifically in the Taskers Chance neighborhood beginning on Wednesday.

Residents reported seeing SUVs with tinted windows and masked and armed men on street corners and parked outside houses. In response, residents began organizing shifts to observe the agents and their activities.

On Friday night, after agents had occupied a section of the neighborhood for more than 40 hours, ICE thugs lined up several vehicles and began to surround a house. Observers on the sidewalk were forced to move out of the path of the ICE vehicles, which drove onto the sidewalk, nearly striking several observers.

César Díaz, Frederick City Council president, told the Baltimore Banner he witnessed Katie Nash, vice president of the Frederick City Council, nearly run over by an ICE agent. “People had to move or risk getting run over,” he said, identifying Nash as a person at risk. “I had to step back to avoid from getting hit by the car.”

In front of the home, several community members and anti-ICE protesters were seated with locked arms to prevent ICE officers from entering. It is unclear if ICE agents ever presented a warrant of any kind, judicial or administrative.

With local police watching, ICE goons began attacking the nonviolent protesters in front of the house. Video taken by bystanders shows ICE agents swinging batons at people seated on the ground.

After clearing a path to the door, ICE agents entered the house but left without making any arrests.

The Trump administration is able to carry out the mass deportation operation only because of the collaboration of the Democratic Party. Last week the House, in a resounding bipartisan 370-48 vote, passed legislation to fund the federal government, including DHS, through December 11.

The bill, which was supported by Trump, had already cleared the Senate. It was signed by Trump on September 2.

The necessity of building an independent movement in the working class against both parties and the capitalist system they represent could not be any clearer. While posturing against Trump’s fascistic regime, the Democrats do everything in their power to ensure that his legislative and police state agenda moves forward.

The protests against ICE in Colorado, Maryland and throughout the country point the way forward. But protesting is not enough. The protests must become the starting point for uniting the working class, immigrant and native-born, and mobilizing its social power independently of both capitalist parties on the basis of a socialist perspective.