ICE Policy Allows Third Country Removal with Zero Notice

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Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd M. Lyons issued new policy by memo as of 9 July 2025.

His policy memo told federal immigration agents it’s fine to deport people to countries other than their country of origin on as little as six hours’ notice without regard to whether they will be safe from abuse, persecution, or torture in the destination country, or zero notice if the receiving country provides “diplomatic assurances” that the deported people will not be tortured or persecuted.

Deporting someone to a country they have no connection with is called third country removal. (It is expulsion to a country that is not their country of origin and is not the USA, so it is a third country.) Until very recently, TCR has been unusual.

Previously, TCR required confirmation that the person had some type of linkage to the receiving country or the country agreed to receive them. Now, people can be sent to places they have never been and have no connection with, with hardly any warning and no promise of safety. At least one flight of immigrants has been sent to a third country that said it was not told ahead of time in the past couple of months.

The USA is a party to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which strictly forbids sending a person to any country where they are likely to face torture. Article 3 of CAT says:

No State Party shall expel, return (‘refouler’) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

The new ICE policy ignores those protections.

People in immigration detention are not entitled to legal representation unless they are able to contact and pay for lawyers themselves. USA citizens are being rounded up along with immigrants, so the new policy is a perfect setup for ethnic cleansing by expelling anyone Donald Trump’s regime dislikes, regardless of citizenship.

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