Trump Sends Millions to Authoritarian Leaders in Deportation Crackdown

The Trump administration has agreed to pay at least $410 million to facilitate its so-called “third-country deportations” for immigrants.

As of the end of June, 31 countries, mostly in Latin America or Africa, have made deals to take immigrants expelled from the United States—despite having no connection to the deportees themselves, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The effort to secure the deals was led by Christian Ehrhardt, who was tapped to lead the Trump administration’s brand new Office of Remigration, a 15-person office named for the racist, far-right scheme to expel minorities from Europe. The deals were sought under the explicit orders of Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff and resident White House ghoul.

For several months, Ehrhardt has rushed to lock in deals with numerous foreign leaders. “The messaging is not just that he is a deputy assistant secretary of state. He’s really part of the White House, so they roll out the red carpet,” a U.S. official familiar with his meetings told the Post.

As part of those deals, the Trump administration has agreed to pay $81 million directly to 13 foreign governments, which represents a sizable expansion of the sums being sent to authoritarian leaders. The agreements allow countries to specify what kinds of immigrants they will take—where they were originally from and their criminal background. For example, the government of Burundi accepted a $12 million agreement to take up to 250 African nationals who were non-violent criminals, while Cameroon accepted a $30 million to take up to 1,000 African nationals with a preference for non-violent criminals.

The secret deals were written without the typical statutory requirements to assure human rights safeguards. The State Department’s own human rights reports explicitly warn of violations in several of the countries, including Cameroon, Gabon, and Equatorial Guinea.

As part of those deals, the Trump administration has also promised to award $179 million to the International Organization for Migration and $124 million to the U.N. Refugee Agency for third-country deportations. For example, the Central African Republic agreed to accept 1,500 immigrants in exchange for an $85 million donation to the IOM. The highest contribution to this agency under the Biden administration was $14 million.

Immigration attorneys and advocates have argued that the third-country deportations are simply a loophole to bypass the United States’ own rules against sending immigrants back to their country of origin if they are at risk of persecution or torture there. In many cases, third countries simply send the immigrants back to their home countries anyway.

On Friday, a federal appeals court ruled that these “refoulement” policies are unlawful. The Trump administration is expected to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now hiding the locations of thousands of immigrants who received a final deportation order. 

The Associated Press reports that the agency’s online detainee locator database no longer contains any record of these individuals, preventing their family members and legal representatives from locating them. The move also hinders their lawyers from filing habeas petitions for their release since they don’t know which federal district to file in, and means ICE could quickly detain and deport a person before they have a chance to fight their case. 

In July, about 16,000 people who were arrested and processed into detention by ICE were given final removal orders, the AP reported, citing data collected by UCLA and U.C. Berkeley as part of the Deportation Data Project. That’s more than a third of all of ICE’s bookings that month.  

“Families are freaking out because they think the person has been deported and they don’t know where the person might be,” Greg Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, told the AP. “On the attorney side, this has serious implications for the ability to contact their client. It certainly has implications about how it will interfere with the attorney-client relationship.”

Detainees held at ICE facilities in Adelanto, California, as well as temporary holding centers in Minneapolis, New York City, and suburban Chicago appear to be exempt from the new change, thanks to litigation requiring ICE to document these detainees in the online locator system immediately when they arrive. 

ICE made the move on September 15 without announcing it publicly, according to three unnamed current and former agency officials who anonymously spoke to the AP. Immigration lawyers confirmed to the wire service that they suddenly couldn’t find their clients in the online system this week, and the AILA alerted its members on Friday. 

It’s yet another move meant to thwart legal challenges to the Trump administration’s callous mass deportations, while adding the cruel measure of preventing family members from knowing where their relatives are. Considering ICE’s record of medically neglecting detainees, some could even be experiencing serious health issues at the same time. But for this administration, spreading fear and cruelty is by design. 

Donald Trump’s attempts to silence the media have only turned out to silence him.

The president participated in a ribbon cutting ceremony for his new helipad on the South Lawn of the White House Monday, speaking in front of a hard-hatted crowd wearing neon yellow, high-visibility vests. But exactly what Trump was saying remained a mystery, as the press pool wasn’t present to mic him up.

Instead, the White House’s official feed was unable to pick up any noise apart from the blaring drone of a stationary Marine One helicopter parked yards away. Trump’s audio was completely garbled.

Even Newsmax—one of the few networks to air the event—recognized that it was “one example” of the president’s censorship scheme “backfiring just a little bit.”

“Obviously the ramifications are right here. Can’t hear what the president’s saying,” remarked Newsmax host Bianca de la Garza.

Trump announced Friday that he was banning MS NOW, CNN, and Politico from the White House, writing on Truth Social that the prohibition was the result of “FAKE NEWS.”

Other broadcasters considered the ban an assault on the First Amendment and an affront to news institutions across the country. By Monday, all the broadcasters in the White House press pool—including NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox News—had joined together to suspend coverage of the president and his actions until he reversed course.

MS NOW, CNN, and Politico also filed a lawsuit against the president and his administration Monday, describing the selective ban as a “a blatant violation” of the First Amendment.

A coalition of their attorneys further argued that the Constitution “does not allow a president or any other government official to deprive the press of their First Amendment rights and liberty and property interests with no notice or process based solely on his dislike of the content of their reporting.”

Trump responded to the backlash shortly after, writing on Truth Social that “the White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America.”

Iran has threatened to unveil a new weapon and alter the landscape of the war if Donald Trump follows through on his pledge to “wipe out” the nation.

“If a new aggression takes place, we will definitely change the weapons and geography of the war,” Hossein Mohebbi, a spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, told Fars news agency Monday.

Mohebbi did not elaborate on the weapon types, or clarify which new areas could be hit. But he did add that the world would be “astounded” by the new weapons, and reiterated that the U.S. has already “been defeated in this war” but “it does not have the courage to admit and accept this defeat.”

The inflammatory language was a direct response to comments that Trump made to Fox News chief foreign correspondent Trey Yingst on Sunday. The president reportedly said that his current options include “wiping Iran out, letting them rot economically, or making a deal.”

“My question is: If and when do I blow the entire nation up? They better behave,” Yingst recalled Trump saying during a phone conversation earlier that day.

Trump told Yingst that he would “probably” be open to meeting with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly this week, though he added that this weekend is “no different from any other weekend.”

Trump has promised for months that his real estate developer son-in-law Jared Kushner and real estate developer turned U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff were on the brink of negotiating a peace deal with Tehran. That has not panned out.

Instead, the war has dragged on for seven months. Some of Trump’s closest advisers—including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—have reportedly discussed the possibility that the conflict could extend beyond Inauguration Day 2029.

The Iran war has done nothing good for America since it began. The conflict has so far killed at least 22 U.S. service members and wounded more than 820 others. It has also killed more than 3,500 people in Iran and injured tens of thousands of locals, according to data published by Al Jazeera.

The conflict has also taken an enormous toll on daily life in the U.S., inflaming the cost of practically everything as shipping companies contend with rising oil costs. As a result, Trump’s approval rating has plummeted, with trust and loyalty rattled even among his base, which is reportedly losing patience with the unyielding violence.

So far, only one Republican lawmaker has publicly condemned President Donald Trump’s decision to ban three major news outlets from the White House.

Idaho Representative Mike Simpson told Punchbowl News Monday that restricting CNN, MS NOW, and Politico’s access to the White House was “wrong.”

“Just because you don’t like what the press is reporting or the fact that they wouldn’t call it the Gulf of America or something else like that, that’s not the reason to ban the press. You should never ban the press. The press is what keeps us honest,” Simpson said. “So I don’t like what they’re doing.”

Republican lawmakers who have opposed Trump’s policies in the past, such as Senators John Cornyn, Thom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski, all remained silent. Republican lawmakers who like to pretend to be free speech advocates, such as Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, also failed to respond to the president’s sudden crackdown on the press.

Representative Thomas Massie only receives partial credit for posting a quip about the ban that was mostly about his opposition to Trump’s fictional $5,000 checks.

Behind closed doors, however, it’s a different story.

Republican strategist Melik Abdul told CNN Monday morning that Republicans secretly acknowledged that Trump’s press ban was a “problem,” but they were too afraid to say anything publicly for fear of backlash from the president.

“If you talk to Republicans behind closed doors. What you’re hearing is this type of petulance, this type of performative thing the president does, it is truly exhausting,” Abdul told CNN.

Trump’s move has generated plenty of immediate backlash. The three outlets he banned filed a lawsuit Monday, and the entire presidential television press pool has agreed to suspend its coverage in the wake of Trump’s decision.