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He Was Deported to a Country He’d Never Heard Of

27 min episode · 2 min read
·
Nicholas Casey,Roberto Mosquera

Episode

27 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Leadership, Crypto & Web3, Economics & Policy

AI-Generated Summary

Key Takeaways

  • ✓Third-Country Deportation Scale: An estimated 25,000 people have been sent through third countries under the Trump administration's deportation program. Approximately 5,000 of those cases involve individuals sent to maximum security prisons or hotels across multiple countries, often for indefinite periods with no charges filed and no clear release date.
  • ✓Financial Incentives Drive Country Participation: The Trump administration pays receiving countries to accept deportees with no connection to those nations. El Salvador received $6,000,000 to house roughly 250 deportees at its Sikkot prison. Eswatini received $5,100,000. Understanding this payment structure reveals why approximately 35 countries have agreed to participate in the program.
  • ✓Legal Vulnerability of Deportees: Many third-country deportees were previously protected by immigration court orders barring removal to their home countries due to credible torture threats. The Trump administration circumvents these protections by routing deportees to unrelated nations, effectively bypassing existing judicial rulings without directly challenging them in court.
  • ✓Supreme Court Deference Pattern: When lower courts have paused third-country deportations on due process grounds, the Supreme Court has previously granted emergency stays allowing deportations to continue, without issuing written opinions explaining the reasoning. The Court has historically granted the executive branch broad latitude on immigration enforcement decisions.
  • ✓Guantanamo Precedent as Warning: Casey draws a direct parallel between third-country deportees and Guantanamo Bay detainees, noting that individuals placed outside US jurisdiction can remain imprisoned indefinitely when no country agrees to accept them. Deportees already transferred, like Mosquera, remain unaffected even if the Supreme Court blocks future deportations.

What It Covers

NYT reporter Nicholas Casey examines the Trump administration's third-country deportation policy through the case of Roberto Mosquera, a 59-year-old Cuban-American deported to Eswatini after decades in the US, as the Supreme Court considers whether to allow these deportations to continue.

Key Questions Answered

  • •Third-Country Deportation Scale: An estimated 25,000 people have been sent through third countries under the Trump administration's deportation program. Approximately 5,000 of those cases involve individuals sent to maximum security prisons or hotels across multiple countries, often for indefinite periods with no charges filed and no clear release date.
  • •Financial Incentives Drive Country Participation: The Trump administration pays receiving countries to accept deportees with no connection to those nations. El Salvador received $6,000,000 to house roughly 250 deportees at its Sikkot prison. Eswatini received $5,100,000. Understanding this payment structure reveals why approximately 35 countries have agreed to participate in the program.
  • •Legal Vulnerability of Deportees: Many third-country deportees were previously protected by immigration court orders barring removal to their home countries due to credible torture threats. The Trump administration circumvents these protections by routing deportees to unrelated nations, effectively bypassing existing judicial rulings without directly challenging them in court.
  • •Supreme Court Deference Pattern: When lower courts have paused third-country deportations on due process grounds, the Supreme Court has previously granted emergency stays allowing deportations to continue, without issuing written opinions explaining the reasoning. The Court has historically granted the executive branch broad latitude on immigration enforcement decisions.
  • •Guantanamo Precedent as Warning: Casey draws a direct parallel between third-country deportees and Guantanamo Bay detainees, noting that individuals placed outside US jurisdiction can remain imprisoned indefinitely when no country agrees to accept them. Deportees already transferred, like Mosquera, remain unaffected even if the Supreme Court blocks future deportations.

Notable Moment

After 30 days without food in an Eswatini prison, Mosquera's vision began deteriorating. His US attorney urged him to end the hunger strike, warning that starvation would not produce his release. The strike did yield one result: prison officials allowed him to purchase a phone.

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Episode Transcript

Women's tennis has always stood for high performance. World class athletes. Nothing given, everything earned. Now the WTA and Accenture are partnering to raise the bar even higher by putting athletes first, by applying technology and AI to turn data into real advantage for players, fans, and partners. This is not just about what's next. It's about what's possible. Together, Accenture and the WTA are reinventing the future of women's tennis. Accenture, the official business and technology consulting partner of the WTA. Learn more at accenture.com/wta. From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. In its effort to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible, the Trump administration has relied more and more on a highly controversial strategy, deporting people to countries they have no connection to. The practice has drawn outrage from civil rights groups and immigrant advocates. And last week, the federal court ruled that it was illegal because it violated people's rights to due process. The administration has challenged that ruling, and now it's in front of the Supreme Court. And so today, my colleague, Nicholas Casey, explains what it actually looks like to be sent to a country you do not know. It's Monday, September 28. Nick Casey, welcome back to The Daily. Thanks, Rachel. So, Nick, late last week, we got word that the Supreme Court was basically poised to decide whether to block the Trump administration's ability to deport people to countries they are not from. This is known as third country deportations. It's also a practice that you've been following extensively. So tell us how this works. So a third country deportation is when The US deport someone not to the country that they're from, but to just another country. It can even seem to be like a random country. Often, the person has no connection to the place that they're being sent to. Mhmm. And this is a strategy which has become a hallmark now of the Trump administration. Trump came to office, obviously, promising to really ramp up deportations, and this is very much part of it. Mhmm. But this goes beyond really anything that's been done by previous administrations largely because many of the countries that people are being sent to now have really spotty human rights records. And the fact that The US has been sending people to these countries just kind of raises fundamental questions about America itself. Like, what is our relationship to these places that have got bad human rights records? What's our relationship to people that we are deporting? What human rights do we grant these people? And so this week, the Supreme Court's going to decide, essentially, can this practice continue? And what do we know about the people who are being deported this way? Yeah. I mean, according to the administration, this is a tool that it's been using to go after people with criminal records. They've even called them depraved monsters. They've said that they are the …

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