Kosovo agreed to accept up to 50 third-country deportees from United States

On June 11, 2025, Kosovo's embassy in Washington confirmed to CBS News that the government had agreed to accept up to 50 third-country nationals deported from the United States, describing the arrangement as a "temporary relocation" of people while officials worked to facilitate their "safe return to their home country." The embassy said Kosovo would seek "the opportunity to select individuals from a proposed pool," provided they met standards related to "rule of law and public order," but did not disclose which countries the deportees would come from. A State Department spokesperson called the deal a "key Trump administration priority" but would not say whether the U.S. was paying Kosovo for its cooperation.

The first deportee arrived in Kosovo that December; the country's Interior Ministry told the Associated Press the person had been "granted temporary protection, in accordance with the applicable legislation." Kosovo, one of Europe's poorest countries and a close U.S. ally since declaring independence from Serbia in 2008, has not ratified either the Convention Against Torture or the 1951 Refugee Convention — international commitments that would ordinarily constrain how a receiving state can treat a transferred person, and whose absence heightens the risk that Kosovo's assurances go unenforced.