By Myles Miller and Hadriana Lowenkron
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 utilized, 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.
The report outlines the cost of President Donald Trump’s controversial policy of sconcludeing non-citizens to countries other than their own. The White Houtilize has argued that this method is necessary to rerelocate undocumented criminals whose home nations won’t take them.
Immigration groups that have challenged the practice in court have stated 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 notified Senate committee staff in a private interview that the program was intconcludeed as an intimidation strategy and a costly deterrent aimed at pressuring migrants to drop asylum claims, according to the report. The person stated 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 applying outside auditors to track how the money is spent, the report’s authors stated.
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 countest 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 hoapplying at a United States military base in Djibouti along the way. He was sent back to Mexico weeks later. President Claudia Sheinbaum stated her government was not informed of the deportation, according to the report.
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 stated they had not refutilized 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 relocating ahead with a $38.3 billion plan to recreate the US immigration detention system, in a sweeping expansion that officials declare 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.
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