United States began mass unwritten third-country deportations to Mexico under Trump

Between January 20, 2025 and March 9, 2026, the United States deported almost 13,000 third-country nationals to Mexico, according to a Human Rights Watch analysis of ICE removal data obtained via FOIA litigation — a 42 percent increase in the monthly average compared with the prior 27 months, and by far the largest volume of any country under the Trump administration's third-country deportation program. No written agreement between the two governments has ever been published; a March 2026 Justice Department court filing in a habeas case referred only to a "standing (unwritten) agreement," without identifying its legal basis, under which ICE had removed approximately 6,000 Cuban nationals to Mexico in the preceding year alone.

Cuban nationals make up the largest single group — an estimated 4,353 people between January 2025 and March 2026 — because Cuba routinely refuses to accept back nationals who left decades earlier or who have U.S. criminal records, leaving them without status in either country. Human Rights Watch interviewed 53 deportees and documented individuals shackled during transport, released without notice in high-crime Mexican border cities with no shelter or support, and denied any meaningful opportunity to raise a fear of return before being designated for removal to Mexico rather than their country of citizenship — a country most had never visited.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has publicly denied that Mexico agreed to serve as a third country, saying migrants transferred there are received "for humanitarian reasons" rather than under any formal arrangement, without clarifying whether bilateral cooperation had ever been consolidated into an agreement. The practice is being litigated in D.V.D. v. Department of Homeland Security, a class action brought by a Cuban immigrant and three others seeking the right to challenge third-country removal before being sent to a country where they might face harm.

Updates

2025-12-08 — ACLU alleged detainees were beaten and forced to climb the border wall into Mexico [3, 4]

The ACLU reported that ICE officers at the Camp East Montana detention facility in El Paso, Texas handcuffed non-Mexican detainees, drove them over an hour to the border near Santa Teresa, New Mexico, and had masked officers order them to climb over the border wall into Mexico. One Cuban detainee said officers told him that refusing meant being sent "to a jail cell in El Salvador or Africa"; another said an officer crushed his testicles and forced fingers into his ears until he lost consciousness and had to be hospitalized. The ACLU said the practice violates U.S. and international law governing third-country deportations, which require the receiving country's consent and assurances against persecution.

2026-08-19 — Mother Jones: ICE denied a Deaf detainee an interpreter, deported him to Mexico [5]

Mother Jones reported that ICE denied a Deaf Venezuelan asylum seeker identified as Emilio's repeated requests for a sign-language interpreter during nine weeks of immigration detention in southern Texas, then put him on a deportation bus to Mexico rather than Venezuela in February 2026; he was dropped off in Villahermosa without his passport and remained stranded there as of the report. Emilio's case was one of more than 100 Deaf asylum seekers who have received deportation or removal orders since the start of 2026, according to data the nonprofit Mobile Pathways provided to Mother Jones.