Thirteen Thousand Sent Anywhere But Home
Thirteen thousand people have been removed under the third-country deportation framework — many under removal orders issued decades earlier that prior administrations would not have enforced this way.
#deportation machinery #rule of law
Through early 2026, thirteen thousand people had been removed from the United States under the third-country deportation framework — many of them subject to removal orders issued decades or generations earlier and never previously enforced this way. The destinations were not the deportees’ countries of origin but whatever third countries could be persuaded or coerced to receive them.
The legal authority for such removals is contested but technically existent. What is genuinely new is the willingness to use it at scale, combined with the choice of destination. Previous administrations encountered the same dormant orders and the same statutory tools and concluded — generally without articulating the reasoning — that the cost in destabilized lives, in deaths in unfamiliar countries, and in international relationships was not worth the enforcement gain. That cost-benefit calculation has been reversed.