Trump’s Deportations Only Work if Countries Agree to Take Their Citizens Back

World|Trump’s Deportations Only Work if Countries Agree to Take Their Citizens Back
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/31/world/trumps-deportations-only-work-if-countries-agree-to-take-their-citizens-back.html
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President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda has revealed a crucial but little recognized truth. Deportation is not unilateral. It requires an agreement between two countries — one that’s expelling people, and one that’s receiving them.
President Trump made mass deportations a signature campaign issue. In the days since he was sworn in, ICE agents have conducted high-profile raids and sent military and charter planes carrying undocumented immigrants back to their countries of origin.
That has led to diplomatic friction: A flight of shackled deportees to Brazil drew protests from its government, and President Gustavo Petro of Colombia refused to allow two U.S. military planes carrying deportees to land, sparking a diplomatic face-off that led to the threat of U.S. tariffs before Colombia eventually backed down.
The disputes showed that it’s one thing for the Trump administration to detain undocumented immigrants, and quite another to actually deport them. Sending people to another country requires bilateral negotiations — and, in the last week, quite a bit of diplomatic strong arming.
The Trump administration also seems to be working to strengthen its diplomatic leverage. On Wednesday, the president announced plans to set up a detention camp at the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,” President Trump said. “Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back, so we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo.”