A few weeks ago, prominent Russian opposition leaders in exile made a startling plea to the Canadian government: Please accept hundreds of asylum-seekers currently detained in the United States before they are summarily returned to Russia. Apparently, Russian asylum-seekers are being deported en masse to their country of origin, where many are imprisoned upon arrival due to their involvement in opposition and anti-war campaigning. Then last week, reporters learned that hundreds of Iranian nationals already in immigration detention would be deported to Iran. Some were allegedly willing to go back, but others were not—some of the lawyers said their clients had even disappeared.
Over the last several years, experts, civil society, and governments have embraced a name for when countries reach across borders to silence dissent. It is called transnational repression, and the U.S. government used to be very much against it. Now, as these stories demonstrate, Washington has become an eager collaborator.
To the extent that people are familiar with the term, transnational repression probably evokes incidents like the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, the abduction of Rwandan activist Paul Rusesabagina from Dubai, and the murder plots against Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad in New York. Those are certainly striking examples in which governments have targeted dissidents on foreign soil. But research has consistently established that most transnational repression involves a degree of cooperation between the origin state and the host state to secure the return and punishment of dissidents.
Typically, this involves the origin state’s subversion or manipulation of host state personnel or institutions. For instance, the origin state might trick Interpol into issuing a notice to detain someone on political grounds, and the host state might rely on that notice to detain and deport someone back to the origin state. Alternately, the origin state might suborn host state security officers to detain someone and hand them over so they can be illegally returned. This, for example, has been the modus operandi for Turkey’s global campaign of abductions since 2016. Such cooperation often overlaps with poor rule of law in the host state and with systemic hostility toward migrants. When it comes to facilitating transnational repression, “hardened” migration systems provide more opportunities for abuse and failure.
With these deportations, the United States has proactively embraced the return of dissidents as a matter of policy. While there were previous examples of transnational repression on U.S. soil, these usually involved systems failing due to effective manipulation by the origin state or unilateral acts like assassination plots on U.S. soil. The recent Russian deportations are different because they appear to involve proactive cooperation. The fact that several of the deported Russians were arrested immediately upon arrival suggests that the United States informed Moscow of who was being returned and when.
The United States’ participation in these acts of transnational repression is a significant breach of its human rights responsibilities. International law provides an ironclad prohibition against refoulement, or the return of someone to a place where they are likely to face torture or ill treatment. Refoulement is explicitly banned under U.S. law through the country’s accession to the United Nations Convention Against Torture (UNCAT). Indeed, unlike many international treaties, this one was signed and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1990, so there is no question that it is law. Iran, for what it’s worth, never signed the UNCAT, and though Russia remains a signatory, it just withdrew from the European Committee on the Prevention of Torture and no longer is bound by the European Convention on Human Rights. While it is likely that Russia and Iran gave diplomatic assurances that deportees will not be abused, these should be viewed as pro forma given both countries’ widespread abuses of individuals in detention. The failure of the U.S. judicial system to stop these executive actions that obviously violated human rights commitments is a mark of shame for U.S. rule of law.
It is also a major reversal of years of policymaking on a topic that had bipartisan support. Under the Biden administration, but with clear interest and support from Republicans in Congress, there was a “whole-of-government” policy push to counter transnational repression as a matter of foreign and domestic policy. The administration raised the issue with allies and in multilateral forums, and the Justice Department and the intelligence community built out complex streams of work to address it. The United States was widely recognized as a leader on the topic, and its interventions helped push other democracies to take it up themselves, which was most recently evident in a leaders’ statement from the 2025 G-7 summit, but also in a slew of new domestic policy initiatives in countries around the world. According to current U.S. officials, countering transnational repression remains a State Department priority, but that is hard to believe given the Trump administration’s actions.
At a time when the U.S. government is killing unarmed civilians in international waters, participation in transnational repression may seem like a minor issue. But in addition to being a catastrophe for those who have already been unlawfully deported or who fear they will be next, it represents a more fundamental assault on an international order grounded in the protection of individual dignity. Choosing to participate in transnational repression signals that the government will break international norms at the expense of rights and will work with overtly authoritarian governments to establish new illiberal norms that privilege the state.
The future they are building is one in which states cooperate in a global condominium to suppress transnational dissent, trading favors and swapping opponents across borders. It is one in which a fundamental means of continuing the struggle against dictatorships—fleeing to a more democratic country and advocating from there—is foreclosed. U.S. participation in this behavior—which is already widespread in Central Asia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and increasingly East Africa—would be a tremendous blow to the possibility of exile as refuge. This couldn’t come at a worse time, as the spread of digital technologies and authoritarian impunity have already facilitated transnational repression at a scale and scope never seen before.
Within the disaster of the current administration’s actions, there is an opportunity for other countries committed to countering transnational repression to make a difference. Because of its sometimes high-handed approach to diplomacy, the Biden administration helped create the impression at the United Nations and elsewhere that transnational repression accusations were being used as a political weapon by Western states to bash offenders in the global south. Advocacy by human rights organizations and the U.N.’s own bodies has helped shift this perception, but the problem lingers.
A full-throated condemnation of U.S. President Donald Trump’s actions by allied governments in Europe and elsewhere would demonstrate their intent to fight transnational repression regardless of who the perpetrators are. As bizarre as it would have sounded two years ago, states should also rapidly adopt policies to accept dissidents forced to flee the United States. Naming what the United States is doing, pledging to fight its institutionalization, and ensuring other countries remain safe havens against global authoritarianism would help pro-democracy advocates continue their global struggle.
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