US Spent $35 Million to Send Deportees to Third-Party Nations

Myles Miller and Hadriana Lowenkron

Sat, February 14, 2026 at 8:19 AM GMT+9 3 min read

Photographer: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

(Bloomberg) – The Trump administration spent more than $35 million to deport roughly 300 migrants to countries they had no connection to, doling out millions of dollars in lump-sum transfers to foreign governments without a system to track how the money was used, according to a report released Friday.

The figures from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats average out to a cost of roughly $116,666 per person deported. In Rwanda, which received seven deportees, the total cost reached about $1.1 million per person, the report found.

Most Read from Bloomberg

A Tunnel to Transform Los Angeles

Mamdani’s Grocery Plan Takes Shape In Economic Policy Shift

New Zealand Net Migration Sinks to Lowest Level in More Than a Decade

The Best Tactics for Tackling Speeders

NY Private School Startup Seeks Edge by Giving 42% Fee Discount

The report outlines the cost of President Donald Trump’s controversial policy of sending non-citizens to countries other than their own. The White House has argued that this method is necessary to remove undocumented criminals whose home nations won’t take them.

Immigration groups that have challenged the practice in court have said the practice has wide-ranging effects on law-abiding non-citizens who are at risk of being sent to unfamiliar countries with little, if any, opportunity to fight it.

A US official told Senate committee staff in a private interview that the program was intended as an intimidation strategy and a costly deterrent aimed at pressuring migrants to drop asylum claims, according to the report. The person said destinations such as Palau, a Pacific island nation, or Eswatini, a kingdom in southern Africa, were selected in part to signal that migrants could be sent to remote locations far from home.

The bulk of the money went to five countries — Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, El Salvador, Palau and Eswatini — which collectively received $32 million. The funds were transferred directly to foreign governments rather than through third-party implementing partners, and the State Department is not using outside auditors to track how the money is spent, the report’s authors said.

Equatorial Guinea, which ranks 172 out of 182 countries in Transparency International’s corruption index, received $7.5 million — more than the total American foreign assistance provided to the country over the previous eight years combined, according to the report.

The report detailed specific examples in which migrants were sent to countries far from their home nation. A Mexican national, for instance, was flown more than 8,000 miles to South Sudan at an estimated cost of $91,000 per person, including housing at a United States military base in Djibouti along the way. He was sent back to Mexico weeks later. President Claudia Sheinbaum said her government was not informed of the deportation, according to the report.

Story continues  

And a Jamaican national was sent to Eswatini at an estimated cost of more than $181,000, despite having deportation orders to Jamaica. Weeks later, the US again paid to fly him home. Jamaican officials said they had not refused his return, the report’s authors added.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment about the report.

Separately, The Trump administration is moving ahead with a $38.3 billion plan to remake the US immigration detention system, in a sweeping expansion that officials say will streamline operations and speed deportations.

The plan, known as the Detention Reengineering Initiative, calls for acquiring and renovating eight large-scale detention centers, adding 16 processing sites and taking control of 10 existing “turnkey” facilities where Immigration and Customs Enforcement already operates.

–With assistance from Alicia A. Caldwell and Eric Martin.

(Updates with detention system plan, in final two paragraphs.)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

Epstein Files Contain a Big Clue About Cambodia’s Missing Masterpieces

The Georgia Pastor Accused of Defrauding the VA of Nearly $24 Million

UPS’s Missteps Have Made the Company’s Road Ahead Less Certain

Drug Cartels Are Shifting Their Money Laundering to Crypto. Cops Can’t Keep Up

How Do You Steal an Airplane? One Piece at a Time

©2026 Bloomberg L.P.

Terms and Privacy Policy

Privacy Dashboard

More Info