Trump’s Deportation Deals

Like you, we’re waiting to find out whether the war in Iran is about to take a significant turn. More on that below. But first, I want to draw your attention to a remarkable story that some of my colleagues reported.

President Trump came into office last year promising to radically reduce immigration and deport “millions” of migrants. But he has fallen well short of his deportation target, and after a series of high-profile immigration operations in American cities sapped the tolerance for mass detention, that’s becoming a political problem.

And so increasingly, the administration is turning to cutting deals with countries willing to take migrants who can’t be sent back to their own countries. Today I write about how Trump has turned mass deportations into a driver of American foreign policy.

A new kind of deportation

In March of 2025, just a couple of months after Donald Trump took office for the second time, the U.S. deported more than 200 Venezuelans — not to Venezuela, but to El Salvador. They were kept in a notorious maximum-security prison for four months.

In exchange for taking them, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele — who already had a reputation for stepping on human rights — received millions of dollars. The U.S. State Department upgraded its travel advisory for El Salvador, deeming it among the safest countries in the world to visit. Other countries watched closely, looking for ways, as one legal expert put it, to “emulate the Bukele arrangement.”

As my colleagues report in a new investigation, many more — about a dozen, as far as we know — have since gotten their chance.

The El Salvador deal was one of the first major examples of the “third-country deportations” pursued by the Trump administration — deportations that send migrants to countries that are not their own. These deals throw people into places to which they have no ties, and, often, into legal systems where human rights and civil liberties carry little weight.

What exactly the countries get in exchange is murky. But my colleagues found that cutting these deals has become such a priority for the White House that American diplomats have put nearly everything on the negotiating table: The U.S. will pay foreign security forces, ease visa restrictions or tariffs, finance public health services and even reconsider a country’s placement on U.S. watch lists.

America First in Africa

My colleagues saw a cable sent in February from Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s office. What it showed was a government coaching its diplomats on how to persuade their foreign counterparts to sign up for one of these deportation deals.

“If you are willing to take more individuals, then we can potentially provide more support,” was one suggested line.

“Without making any promises, what do you have in mind?” was another.

The cable placed no constraints on whom the U.S. should be negotiating with. Regarding a list of unspecified “countries of concern,” diplomats were told that accepting migrants “can help a country improve its relationship with the United States.”

My colleagues found that some of the most receptive leaders often were strongmen, autocrats and human rights abusers.

The Trump administration is in talks to send migrants to the Central African Republic and recently finalized a deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo, two countries where the judicial systems are often dysfunctional and governments have been linked to torture and forced disappearances.

It has also cut deals with Cameroon and Rwanda, both run by strongman leaders. It has an arrangement with Equatorial Guinea, where torture is systemic, and Eswatini, which has a history of human rights abuses. South Sudan, which is teetering on the brink of civil war, has received migrants, too.

The payoff has been generous. Weeks before Equatorial Guinea announced its agreement, for example, the Trump administration temporarily lifted sanctions on its vice president so he could travel to the U.S. for the United Nations General Assembly meeting. It also wired the country $7.5 million.

A singular focus

It’s not unusual for domestic policy priorities to be reflected in foreign policy, especially in the case of a powerful country like the U.S. After Sept. 11, 2001, America’s war on terror shaped both domestic and foreign policy.

It’s also not unusual for countries to be transactional in their diplomatic objectives. Foreign aid or investment often come with strings attached. In the past that might have meant enforcing human rights or promoting American ideas about democracy.

In that sense, the Trump administration’s efforts to ramp up deportations simply reflect the ideological shift inside the White House. And those efforts happen to be taking place against the backdrop of an aid vacuum, created by last year’s abolition of the U.S. Agency for International Development, that gives Washington that much more leverage.

I spoke to my colleague Eileen Sullivan, a Washington reporter who investigated these deals. Eileen told me that one main difference with the current drive to push countries to agree to deportation deals is the singular focus on prioritizing immigration enforcement, across all government departments.

Under President Biden, she said, the Department of Homeland Security’s main focus was immigration, too, but the State Department was more focused on Ukraine. Now, she said, “everyone is aligned.”

“The difference is that they’re all on the same page now,” Eileen said. “Every single cabinet agency knows that immigration and the deportation agenda is the top priority.”

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Trump’s deadline for Iran

Trump threatened widespread destruction in Iran if its leaders do not meet his Tuesday deadline to open the Strait of Hormuz. But he also floated the possibility that diplomacy might yet avert an escalation.

“We’re giving them until tomorrow 8 o’clock Eastern time, and after that, they’re going to have no bridges, they’re going to have no power plants — Stone Ages,” Trump said yesterday at a White House news conference.

But he also said that Iranian leaders were engaged in productive negotiations. “They would like to be able to make a deal,” he said. His remarks came after Iran made a new 10-point peace proposal. Follow our live updates.

Other developments:

Leaders around the world are struggling in their efforts to find a way to end the war, and they are spooked about what Trump might do next.
The intelligence chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps was killed by an Israeli airstrike.
Israel stepped up attacks on Lebanon.

A journey to the far side of the moon

The four astronauts on the Artemis II mission to the moon yesterday became the humans to fly farthest from Earth, surpassing the record set by Apollo 13.

Later, the astronauts will pass behind the far side of the moon, seeing parts of it never observed with human eyes. In the process, they will fall out of radio contact with Earth for about 41 minutes. Follow our live updates.

My colleague Marco Hernandez explains that the astronauts will be looking at craters, plains and other parts of the moon that could help NASA set up a future lunar base. Watch the video.

OTHER NEWS

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Back on the offensive in Ukraine, Russia is trying to leverage a springtime asset: Leafy trees that can help conceal its troops from drones.
Documents released in January provide an insider’s view of Jeffrey Epstein in Paris as an expatriate eager to mingle in French high society, if not always successfully.
Trump’s foreign aid overhaul sent millions more dollars to big U.S.-based contractors while shutting out smaller groups in developing countries, a new analysis found.

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RECIPE

This crispy, perfectly puffed chicken schnitzel is served with a herby salad of sliced cucumbers, pickles and onions. Begin by splitting the chicken breasts into cutlets and gently pounding them out until thin. This technique helps the chicken cook evenly in the time it takes the crust to turn golden.