US spent $40 million on roughly 300 deportations to third nations, Democratic report finds [View all]

Source: AP

By STEPHEN GROVES and MATTHEW LEE
Updated 7:06 AM CST, February 13, 2026
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration spent at least $40 million to deport roughly 300 migrants to countries other than their own as immigration officials expanded the practice over the last year to carry out President Donald Trump’s goals of quickly removing immigrants from the U.S., according to a report compiled by the Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The Democrats on the Foreign Relations panel, led by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, criticize the practice of third country deportations as “costly, wasteful and poorly monitored” in the report and call for “serious scrutiny of a policy that now operates largely in the dark.”

The State Department, which oversees the negotiations to implement the programs, has stood behind the practice of third country deportations and defended it as a part of Trump’s campaign to end illegal immigration.

“We’ve arrested people that are members of gangs and we’ve deported them. We don’t want gang members in our country,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded when asked about some of the third country deportations at a Senate hearing last month.



Read more: https://apnews.com/article/trump-third-country-deportations-cost-1e79eaf1a4b0e8fa47fa9baad8db582a