migrant

The Afghan man had fled the Taliban for refuge in upstate New York when U.S. immigration authorities ordered him deported to Uganda. The Cuban woman was working at a Texas Chick-fil-A when she was arrested after a minor traffic accident and told she was being sent to Ecuador.

There’s the Mauritanian man living in Michigan told he’d have to go to Uganda, the Venezuelan mother in Ohio told she’d be sent to Ecuador and the Bolivians, Ecuadorians and so many others across the country ordered sent to Honduras.

They are among more than 13,000 immigrants who were living legally in the U.S., waiting for rulings on asylum claims, when they suddenly faced so-called third-country deportation orders, destined for countries where most had no ties, according to the nonprofit group Mobile Pathways, which pushes for transparency in immigration proceedings.

Yet few have been deported, even as the White House pushes for ever more immigrant expulsions. Thanks to unexplained changes in U.S. policy, many are now mired in immigration limbo, unable to argue their asylum claims in court and unsure if they’ll be shackled and put on a deportation flight to a country they’ve never seen.

Some are in detention, though it’s unclear how many. All have lost permission to work legally, a right most had while pursuing their asylum claims, compounding the worry and dread that has rippled through immigrant communities.

And that may be the point.

“This administration’s goal is to instill fear into people. That’s the primary thing,” said Cassandra Charles, a senior staff attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, which has been fighting the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. The fear of being deported to an unknown country could, advocates believe, drive migrants to abandon their immigration cases and decide to return to their home countries.

Things may be changing.

In mid-March, top Immigration and Customs Enforcement legal officials told field attorneys with the Department of Homeland Security in an email to stop filing new motions for third-country deportations tied to asylum cases. The email, which has been seen by the Associated Press, did not give a reason. It has not been publicly released, and Homeland Security did not respond to requests to explain if the halt was permanent.

But the earlier deportation cases? Those are continuing.

An asylum seeker says she’s in panic over possibly being sent to a country she doesn’t know

In 2024, a Guatemalan woman who says she had been held captive and repeatedly sexually assaulted by members of a powerful gang arrived with her 4-year-old daughter at the U.S.-Mexico border and asked for asylum. She later discovered she was pregnant with another child, conceived during a rape.

In December, she sat in a San Francisco immigration courtroom and listened as an ICE attorney sought to have her deported.

The ICE attorney didn’t ask the judge that she be sent back to Guatemala. Instead, the attorney said, the woman from the Indigenous Guatemalan highlands would go to one of three countries: Ecuador, Honduras or across the globe to Uganda.

Until that moment, she’d never heard of Ecuador or Uganda.

“When I arrived in this country, I was filled with hope again and I thanked God for being alive,” the woman said after the hearing, her eyes filling with tears. “When I think about having to go to those other countries, I panic because I hear they are violent and dangerous.” She spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisal from U.S. immigration authorities or the Guatemalan gang network.

There have been more than 13,000 removal orders for asylum seekers

ICE attorneys, the de facto prosecutors in immigration courts, were first instructed last summer to file motions known as “pretermissions” that end migrants’ asylum claims and allow them to be deported.

“They’re not saying the person doesn’t have a claim,” said Sarah Mehta, who tracks immigration issues at the American Civil Liberties Union. “They’re just saying, ‘We’re kicking this case completely out of court and we’re going to send that person to another country.’”

The pace of deportation orders picked up in October after a ruling from the Justice Department’s Board of Immigration Appeals, which sets legal precedent inside the byzantine immigration court system.

The ruling from the three judges — two appointed by former Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and the third a holdover from the first Trump administration — cleared the way for migrants seeking asylum to be removed to any third country where the U.S. State Department determines they won’t face persecution or torture.

After the ruling, the government aggressively expanded the practice of ending asylum claims.

More than 13,000 migrants have been ordered deported to so-called “safe third countries” after their asylum cases were canceled, according to data from San Francisco-based Mobile Pathways. More than half the orders were for Honduras, Ecuador or Uganda, with the rest scattered among nearly three dozen other countries.

Deported migrants are free, at least theoretically, to pursue asylum and stay in those third countries, even if some have barely functioning asylum systems.

Deportations have been far more complicated than the government expected

Immigration authorities have released little information about the third-country agreements, known as Asylum Cooperative Agreements, or the deportees, and it’s unclear exactly how many have been deported to third countries as part of asylum removals.

According to Third Country Deportation Watch, a tracker run by the groups Refugees International and Human Rights First, fewer than 100 of them are thought to have been deported.

In a statement, Homeland Security called the agreements “lawful bilateral arrangements that allow illegal aliens seeking asylum in the United States to pursue protection in a partner country that has agreed to fairly adjudicate their claims.”

“DHS is using every lawful tool available to address the backlog and abuse of the asylum system,” said the statement, which was attributed only to a spokesperson. There are roughly 2 million backlogged asylum cases in the immigration system.

But deportations clearly turned out to be far more complicated than the government expected, restricted by a variety of legal challenges, the scope of the international agreements and a limited number of airplanes.

Mobile Pathways data, for example, shows that thousands of people have been ordered deported to Honduras — despite a diplomatic agreement that allows the country to take a total of just 10 such deportees per month for 24 months. Dozens of people ordered to Honduras in recent months did not speak Spanish as their primary language, but were native speakers of English, Uzbek and French, among other languages.

And while hundreds of asylum-seeking migrants have been ordered sent to Uganda, a top Ugandan official said none have arrived. U.S. authorities may be “doing a cost analysis” and trying to avoid dispatching flights with only a few people on board, Okello Oryem, the Ugandan minister of state for foreign affairs, told the Associated Press.

“You can’t be doing one, two people” at a time,” Oryem said. “Planeloads — that is the most effective way.”

Many immigration lawyers suspect that the March email ordering a halt in new asylum pretermissions could indicate a shift toward other forms of third-country deportations.

“Right now they haven’t been able to remove that many people,” said the ACLU’s Mehta. “I do think that will change.”

“They’re in a hiring spree right now. They will have more planes. If they get more agreements, they’ll be able to send more people to more countries.”

Sullivan writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Garance Burke in San Francisco, Joshua Goodman in Miami, Rodney Muhumuza in Kampala, Uganda, Marlon González in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Molly A. Wallace in Chicago contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — The European Union is expanding its powers to track, raid and deport migrants to “return hubs” in third countries in Africa and elsewhere, quietly adopting tactics of the Trump administration that have drawn public criticism across the 27-nation bloc.

The EU continues to tighten migration policies after right-wing parties took power in some countries in 2024. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, from the center-right European People’s Party coalition, has said that the new measures will prevent a repeat of the 2015 crisis caused by Syria’s civil war, when about 1 million people arrived to seek asylum.

“We have learned the lessons of the past. And today, we are better equipped,” Von der Leyen has said. The new policies, known as the Pact on Migration and Asylum, go into effect June 12.

Far-right parties in Europe have praised the deportation policies of President Trump and called for the EU to adopt a similar approach. Human rights groups warn that authorities are already illegally blocking migrants at EU borders and hollowing out their legal protections.

Italy provides a model

The EU already spends millions of dollars to deter migrants before they reach its shores, and has supported tens of thousands of Africans returning home, voluntarily or by force.

What’s envisioned now is an expansion of what Italy has created under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her “tough on migration” stance. It operates two migrant detention centers for rejected asylum seekers in Albania. One currently holds at least 90 migrants, said lawmaker Rachele Scarpa, who said that she found people confused and scared during a recent visit.

In addition, Meloni’s Cabinet has approved an anti-immigration package that would allow the navy to halt vessels in international waters for up to six months if they are deemed a threat to public order, return intercepted migrants to countries of origin or third countries and speed up the deportation of foreign nationals convicted of crimes.

An “informal group” of EU nations including Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece are pursuing deportation center agreements, said Bernd Parusel, a researcher at the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies.

Kenya is one country they are speaking with, said Tineke Strik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament. Whether consciously or not, the plan is similar to Trump’s deals with nations like El Salvador to take in deported migrants, she said.

Other countries are exploring similar ideas. Sweden’s migration minister has said the conservative ruling coalition approves setting up hubs outside Europe, especially for Afghan and Syrian asylum seekers.

Competing views

During the recent Winter Olympics in Italy, protests erupted over the deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the U.S. delegation. But others in Europe have praised ICE’s actions in Trump’s deportation campaign and called for setting up similar deportation-focused police units.

In 2024, Belgium passed a law allowing the EU border service Frontex to operate in the country, stoking fears among activists that it could join in on raids.

But Frontex’s mandate covers only borders, said spokesperson Chris Borowski, and the current role in voluntary or involuntary returns for the service includes “coordinating flights, helping with travel documents and making sure fundamental rights are respected throughout the process.”

The European Commission has declined requests to take a position on U.S. immigration policies.

In Britain, which left the EU several years ago, the center-left Labor Party government has made curbing unauthorized immigration a key focus.

In February, the Home Office said that almost 60,000 people had been deported since the government was elected in July 2024. It said 9,000 arrests were made of people working without permission in 2025, up by more than half from the year before.

Raids, surveillance and ‘pushbacks’

Under the principle of non-refoulement in EU and international law, a person can’t be returned to a country where they would face persecution.

But European immigration enforcement tactics include so-called pushbacks, where people trying to cross into the EU are forced back across a border without access to asylum procedures.

Authorities in Europe carry out an average of 221 pushbacks a day, according to a February report by a group of humanitarian organizations. More than 80,000 pushbacks were recorded in 2025, the report said, mostly in Italy, Poland, Bulgaria and Latvia.

“Men, women and children — including individuals in critical medical condition — are routinely subjected to beatings, attacks by police dogs, forced stripping, forced river crossings and theft of personal belongings,” according to the report.

European agents are brutalizing migrants just like in the U.S., said Flor Didden, migration policy expert at the Belgian human rights group 11.11.11. Some, like in Greece, even wear masks, as ICE agents typically do.

“The images are shocking and the outrage is justified,” he said of the U.S. “But where is that same moral clarity when European border authorities abuse, rob and let people die?”

Weakening of migrant protections seen

The groups also have recorded an expansion of surveillance technology like drones, thermal cameras and satellites to monitor people on the move.

Other human rights groups warn of a weakening of legal protections.

The EU’s new migration regulations allow for more police raids in private homes and public spaces and more use of surveillance and racial profiling, said a letter to EU institutions in February from 88 nonprofit groups including the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants.

“We cannot be outraged by ICE in the United States while also supporting these practices in Europe,” said the platform’s director, Michele LeVoy.

Olivia Sundberg Diez, EU migration advocate for Amnesty International, said Europe retains more protections for vulnerable migrants than the United States does but shares much of the political momentum toward harsher policies.

“There’s a level of institutions’ and courts’ independence and human rights compliance in Europe that you can’t disregard,” she said. “But the fundamental political impulse is the same, and I worry that the human consequences will be the same.”

McNeil and Zampano write for the Associated Press and reported from Brussels and Rome, respectively. AP writers Elena Becatoros in Athens, Jill Lawless in London, Paolo Santalucia in Rome, Claudia Ciobanu in Warsaw and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON  — The Trump administration urged the Supreme Court on Tuesday to rule that it may block migrants from applying for asylum at ports of entry along the southern border.

The administration’s lawyers argued that the right to asylum, which arose in response to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, does not extend to those who are stopped just short of a border post in California, Arizona or Texas.

They pointed to part of the immigration law that says a non-citizen who “arrives in the United States … may apply for asylum.”

“You can’t arrive in the United States while you’re still standing in Mexico. That should be the end of this case,” Vivek Suri, a Justice Department attorney, told the court.

Immigration rights advocates called this claim “perverse” and illogical. They said such a rule would encourage migrants to cross the border illegally rather than present themselves legally at a border post.

The justices sounded divided and a bit uncertain over how to proceed. But the conservative majority is nonetheless likely to uphold the administration’s broad power over immigration enforcement.

Several of the justices noted, however, the Trump administration is not currently enforcing a “remain in Mexico” policy.

Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson questioned why the court would make a major decision on immigration and asylum with no immediate, practical impact.

The case posed a fundamental clash between the government’s need to manage surges at the border and the moral and historic right to offer asylum to those fleeing persecution.

In 1939, more than 900 Jewish refugees who were fleeing Nazi Germany aboard the MS St. Louis were turned away by Cuba and the United States. They were forced to return to Europe and more than 250 of them died in the Holocaust.

The worldwide moral reckoning spurred many nations, including the United States, to adopt new laws which offer protection to those fleeing persecution.

In the Refugee Act of 1980, Congress said that non-citizens either “physically present in the United States” or “at a land border or port of entry” may apply for asylum.

To be eligible for asylum, a non-citizen had to demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country due to their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

Only a small percentage of applicants win their asylum claims, and only after years of litigation.

But faced with overwhelming surge of migrants, the Obama administration in 2016 adopted a “metering” policy that required people to wait on the Mexican side of the border.

The Trump and Biden administrations maintained such policies for a time.

Immigrant rights advocates sued, contending the metering policy was illegal. They won before a federal judge in San Diego who ruled the migrants had a right to claim asylum.

In a 2-1 decision, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in 2024.

“To ‘arrive’ means ‘to reach a destination,’” Judge Michelle Friedland wrote for the appeals court. “A person who presents herself to an official at the border has ‘arrived.’”

The Trump administration appealed.

Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer said the “ordinary meaning of ‘arrives in’ refers to entering a specific place, not just coming close to it. An alien who is stopped in Mexico does not arrive in the United States.”

On Tuesday, the Justice Department attorney said the court should reverse the 9th Circuit and uphold the government’s broad power to block migrants approaching the border.

“I can’t predict the next border surge,” Suri said.

“For more than 45 years, Congress has guaranteed people arriving at our borders the right to seek asylum, consistent with our international treaty obligations,” said Kelsi Corkran, Supreme Court director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, who argued the case. “Yet this administration believes that Congress gave it discretion to completely ignore those requirements, and turn back those who are seeking refuge from persecution at its whim.”

“The people turned away at our border are fleeing rape, torture, kidnapping, and death threats. You cannot tell families running for their lives to go back and wait in danger because their suffering is inconvenient,” said Nicole Elizabeth Ramos, border rights project directo at Al Otro Lado which was the plaintiff in the case. “We brought this case because the United States made a legal and moral commitment to protect people fleeing persecution.”