The Very High Risk of LGBT is ICE Deportations for Third Countries
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New reports highlight how the Trump administration has used “third country” deportations to remove LGBTQ+ refugees from the United States — including those previously granted safe harbor after fleeing countries where anti-LGBTQ+ laws and sentiments put their lives at risk.
Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is supposed to deport ICE detainees to countries immigrants self-designate. This usually means sending them back to a country of origin or to a country where they have connections. The practice of sending undocumented immigrants to “third countries” — countries they are not from and are not connected to — is typically permitted only when sending them to their designated countries is “impractical, inadvisable, or impossible.”
However, even that permission comes with a caveat. The law states that people should not be sent to countries where their lives or freedom would be threatened — especially when they have expressed fear of being sent to that location.
DHS has not released information about the number of people it has sent to “third countries” under President Donald Trump administration, but recent reporting by Reuters found preliminary data pointing to at least 40,000 cases — including dozens of instances where LGBTQ+ people who could not be sent to their designated countries were sent to countries that are not safe for the LGBTQ+ community.
Reuters tracked 40 people from African nations, Iraq, Jamaica and Russia who were deported to countries with anti-LGBTQ+ laws and sentiment, including criminalization of same-sex sexual acts and abuses against LGBTQ+ people — such as “corrective rape” and conversion practices.
A nonpartisan research brief published Oct. 23 by the Congressional Research Service outlines the risks of “third country” deportations. The agency, a division of the Library of Congress, provides policy and legal analysis to members of Congress and their staff. The brief documents cases in which deportees faced human rights abuses, were denied due process, encountered life-threatening civil conflict or were forcibly returned to the countries they had fled.
Human Rights Watch published a report on Oct. 8 documenting at least 500 of these cases, where detainees were sent to African nations without a “meaningful chance to contest their removals or to articulate their fears of being removed to these countries.” This report highlights the plight of refugees who were previously granted protection in the United States based on persecution they’ve experienced or feared in their home countries because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Although DHS did not send them back to the countries from which they fled, these LGBTQ+ refugees were not assessed for risks or fears before they were sent to alternative locations.
One person interviewed as part of the report did not learn where they were being sent until they were on a plane. They tried to protest the placement based on fears about LGBTQ+ mistreatment but were threatened.
“The judge’s order prevented the United States from deporting the person to their home country, but they said that US immigration officers gave them no chance to challenge their removal to the third country — a country that has a law that criminalizes same-sex relations and where LGBT people have been known to experience discrimination and violence — on the basis that they would likely be persecuted there for the same reason they could not be sent to their home country,” the report states.
One trans interviewee was sent to an African nation that has no path for trans people to receive identity documents that match their self-expression — creating heightened risks due to a mismatch between their presentation and documents.
“Some countries arbitrarily detained people they had accepted, and some have sent people onward to the risk of persecution or torture in their home countries, violating the international law principle of nonrefoulement,” the report states.
Some undocumented immigrants who were sent to unsafe countries were previously awarded special protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) rule — which is intended to prevent the United States from deporting people to a country where they are more likely than not to face violence or torture.
This should be true for Ms. D.B., a Jamaican trans woman described by the National Immigration Law Center as someone who won CAT protection many years ago. She fled Jamaica as a youth after experiencing anti-LGBTQ+ harassment and violence and spent two decades in New York City before Trump’s immigration policy changed. Since October 2025, she has been held in an all-male detention and has faced attempts to send her to at least six different countries — including two that pose significant threats.
Although Ms. D.B. has not been removed from the United States, she still faces significant hardships living in detention. And there doesn’t seem to be meaningful progress toward change.
During a interview on “60 Minutes” about the massive loss for Republicans across the country during this year’s midterm elections, Trump said his administration’s aggressive deportation policies may have played a role in the “bluenami.” He also noted that deportations may have gone too far — acknowledging that his policies have been “too tough” on undocumented immigrants and admitting that many of them had meaningful jobs, paid taxes, were longtime residents, and had not committed crimes.
“I got an A+ for closing up the border. I get very high marks for getting the bad ones out. But I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs that created one violation or breaking of the law and that was that they came into the country illegally,” he said. “Now, there is a large part of the country that think that they should be put out and there’s a large part of the country that thinks they should be allowed to stay if they’re good people working in a landscaping company or working in a hotel or doing something, right? And in some cases paying taxes.”
When asked if his deportation policy “went too far,” Trump agreed: “I think it might be too tough, yeah.”
He went on to explain that although there are many people who want all undocumented immigrants removed from the country, there are also many people who have “modified” views on the subject:
“In other words, get the killers out. Get all the rough ones out. Get the drug dealers out. But let the people that are here — and in some cases here for 10 and 15 years, work a deal for them,” he said.
During the interview, he noted that he’d like to work on a “deal” with Democrats, such as potentially creating a new policy for some undocumented immigrants. Meanwhile, Trump also promoted Stephen Miller, the architect of his deportation strategy, to chief of staff — a move that seems to contradict his comments about possibilities for a new approach.
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