Tiny US Office Strikes Secret Deals to Push Deportations

The Trump administration has turned a newly created State Department office into the nerve center of a global deportation scheme, the Washington Post reports. The State Department's 15-person Office of Remigration has been flying migrants to countries they've never lived in—sometimes authoritarian states with poor human rights records—instead of returning them to their home nations. Internal documents reviewed by the newspaper show at least $410 million pledged to support deals with 31 countries, largely in Africa and Latin America, to accept migrants who are not their own citizens.

It's "an extraordinary break in US foreign policy, inverting the nation's long-standing commitment to resettling refugees in need into an intensive focus on expelling them from the country," write David Nakamura and Adam Taylor. The program, driven by Trump aide Stephen Miller and senior State Department official Andrew Veprek, has already sent more than 25,000 people to at least 28 countries, even as a federal appeals court has found the policy unlawful. Critics, including immigration lawyers, warn that the "third country" arrangements sidestep human rights safeguards and repurpose refugee funds to underwrite deportations. For country-by-country details, read the full story.