More than 40,000 migrants have been deported to third countries under Trump’s immigration crackdown, with about 900 removals involving African nations.

The United States has deported more than 40,000 migrants to countries other than their own under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, including about 900 removals involving African countries, according to preliminary government data shared with Reuters.

Third-country deportations, which were rare before Trump returned to office, have expanded under his administration as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol send migrants to countries other than their nations of origin.

The policy has faced legal challenges, but the US Supreme Court on Tuesday put a hold on a lower court ruling restricting the practice, allowing the Trump administration to continue third-country deportations while the court prepares to hear arguments in December.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) defended the policy, describing third-country removals as an important part of immigration enforcement.

“Third country removals are an essential public safety tool,” DHS spokesman Chandler Rebel said.

A Reuters investigation documented the cases of 40 migrants sent to third countries, including people from Africa, Iraq, Jamaica and Russia, through interviews with deportees and immigration lawyers and a review of hundreds of pages of legal documents.

Of those 40 cases, 16 migrants remain in the countries to which they were deported, with some still detained, while another 16 were subsequently repatriated to their countries of origin against their will.

Nine others are in hiding in third countries, while the whereabouts of one Ghanaian man are unknown.

Some of the migrants documented by Reuters had previously received forms of legal protection in the United States because returning them to their home countries could expose them to risks associated with their sexual orientation.

DHS, however, said ICE does not enforce immigration laws based on sexual orientation.

In February, US District Judge Brian Murphy questioned aspects of the third-country deportation policy in a case challenging the practice, describing the government’s argument that deportees had not specifically requested protection from every possible third country as an “absurdity”.

The Supreme Court’s decision on Tuesday allows the administration to continue the removals while the broader legal dispute proceeds.

Among the migrants documented by Reuters was Abdou Latifou, a Togolese man who had been granted a form of protection preventing his removal to Togo.

Latifou was nevertheless placed on a US deportation flight to Sierra Leone in June because his legal protection did not prevent his removal to another country.

After arriving in Sierra Leone, Latifou said he was held for two weeks in a hotel under police surveillance before being placed on a flight back to Togo.

He later crossed into Benin before travelling to Ivory Coast, where he now lives with a friend and works as a security guard.

More than half of the 40 migrants whose cases Reuters examined, including Latifou, were ineligible for asylum because they had not applied for protection in countries they passed through before entering the United States illegally.

That restriction stemmed from Biden-era asylum rules that were vacated by a federal court in May.

Reuters also documented the case of a Ghanaian woman deported to Cameroon in January who spent seven months there before moving to northern Nigeria to live with a relative.

Another Ghanaian migrant was deported to Sierra Leone and subsequently returned to Ghana before crossing into neighbouring Togo, where he said he had spent months in hiding.

A 44-year-old Mauritanian man who had lived in the United States for more than a decade was detained by ICE in January and deported to Eswatini, a country he said he had never previously heard of.

He said he spent about six weeks in prison before agreeing to return to Mauritania and later crossing into Senegal, where he now lives with relatives while seeking information about other countries that might accept him.

“My life just got turned upside down,” he said.

DHS spokesman Rebel said ICE was no longer responsible for migrants once they were no longer in its custody.

The cases have intensified scrutiny of the Trump administration’s third-country removal policy as the number of deportations continues to rise and the Supreme Court prepares to consider the legal challenge to the practice. (AriseNews TV)