GENEVA (28 September 2026) – US
migration externalization arrangements are already putting
migrants at heightened risk of human rights violations,
including torture and persecution, Human Rights Experts**
warned today, as migrant and asylum seeker transfer
agreements expand across over 35 countries and territories*
where their rights cannot be effectively
safeguarded.
“The harms caused by this US Government
scheme are no longer hypothetical. The arrangements are
triggering a cascade of human rights violations, increasing
risks of torture and ill-treatment and enforced
disappearance, and breaching the customary law principle of
non-refoulement in countries around the world that are
signing agreements to accept plane loads of migrants and
refugees removed from the US,” the experts
said.
Under these removal arrangements, the US
Government has already sent at least 23,000 third country
nationals to 29 countries and territories. The scheme
targets asylum seekers and migrants at various stages of
their immigration process. These arrangements are largely
removed from democratic oversight and independent human
rights monitoring due to their lack of
transparency.
The experts warned that beyond
refoulement risks, these arrangements have opened the door
to a range of other violations, including arbitrary and
incommunicado detention, enforced disappearances, inadequate
access to legal counsel, denial of due process, family
separation, discrimination, homelessness, slavery,
trafficking, serious impacts on mental health and
well-being, and lack of access to healthcare and basic
services.
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“At gravest risk are children, women,
persons with disabilities, victims of trafficking, LGBT
persons, human rights defenders, stateless persons and other
people in extremely vulnerable situations,” they
said.
“These migrants are being transferred to
countries or territories with which they have no ties, which
can be a traumatising and isolating experience that
compounds harms already suffered which triggered their
fleeing to the US in the first place. Others are sent to
places where they risk further violence or discrimination
based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or
human rights advocacy.”
The experts have issued
communications to the US and all Governments with which it
entered into externalization agreements as of June 2026 –
a total of 35 countries and territories so
far.
“More countries are negotiating and signing
agreements every day,” the experts said. “For migrants
in situations of particular vulnerability, the consequences
can be deadly. They may be transferred to states with no
asylum processing infrastructure, protective holding
facilities or adequate health and medical services or
sustainable reintegration options. In many cases, these
third countries are themselves engulfed in conflict, with
their own populations facing displacement, starvation and
debilitating poverty. They lack the capacity to protect the
rights of migrants sent there by wealthy nations seeking to
shirk their international obligations,” they
said.
“Some arrangements provide only temporary
reception followed by onward removal at the discretion of
the third country,” the experts said. “Some countries
may resort to refoulement or pressure migrants to request
return to their country of origin – despite protection
risks – by threatening continued detention or transfer to
yet another country where they face a real risk of
repression,” the experts warned.
“A return cannot
be presumed to be voluntary when a person has no lawful
status, no means of subsistence, no independent legal
advice, or no viable alternative to return,” they said.
“Return under such circumstances would be coerced and
could complete an unlawful chain of refoulement stemming
from the initial transfer by the United
States.”
States cannot shift responsibility for
their international human rights and refugee law obligations
towards migrants and asylum seekers elsewhere at the expense
of fundamental human rights guarantees, the experts
warned.
“States cannot contract out of their
international legal obligations,” the experts said. “The
prohibition of refoulement applies wherever a State
exercises jurisdiction or effective control and at every
stage of a transfer.”
Referencing the UN Human
Rights Committee’s jurisprudence on states retaining
responsibility towards migrants and asylum-seekers when they
seek to outsource their legal obligations, the experts
reiterated that these obligations cannot be set aside
through bilateral agreements, diplomatic assurances,
financial arrangements with the United States or involvement
of international organisations in an externalization
agreement.
“UN entities, including the International
Organization for Migration (IOM) play a crucial role in
assisting refugees and migrants, but their engagement must
never legitimise arrangements that expose people to
refoulement or other grave human rights violations,
including torture, and should be guided by robust human
rights due diligence processes,” the experts
said.
“Participating in measures that lead to rights
violations, including breaches of the non-derogable
prohibition on torture, may, in some situations, amount to
complicity.”
Under international human rights law,
both States that transfer migrants and asylum-seekers
countries or territories that receive them, remain bound by
their international legal obligations toward persons within
their territory or subject to their
jurisdiction.
“Cooperation does not dilute
responsibility,” the experts said. “A State that
knowingly aids or assists another State in conduct that
violates non-refoulement or other human rights obligations
may itself incur international
responsibility.”
“All States and territories
involved must immediately halt these arrangements, restore
access to fair and effective asylum procedures, human rights
protection, due process guarantees, prevent chain
refoulement, and ensure transparency, independent human
rights monitoring and accountability,” the experts
said.
“Human rights must be at the centre of
migration governance, not sacrificed in the pursuit of
deterrence.”
“What is at stake is not merely
migration policy, but the lives, safety, dignity and rights
of people who may already have endured grave harm and who,
in many cases, are fleeing life-threatening persecution and
violence in their home countries,” they said.
The UN
Special Procedures are in contact with the United States and
all 35 countries and territories concerned, the UNHCR and
IOM. The Special Rapporteur of the African Commission has
engaged, within the scope of her regional mandate, with a
number of the African States
concerned.
Notes:
*Antigua and
Barbuda, Belize, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Central
African Republic, Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of Congo,
Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador,
Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala,
Guyana, Honduras, Liberia, Libya, Mexico, Republic of
Moldova, Palau, Panama, Paraguay, Poland, Rwanda, Saint
Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan,
Uganda, Uzbekistan, and Kosovo (All references to Kosovo
should be understood to be in the context of the United
Nations Security Council resolution 1244
(1999)).
**The
experts:
- Gehad Madi, Special
Rapporteur on the human rights of
migrants; - Pau Pérez Sales, Special
Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment or punishment - George
Katrougalos, Independent
expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable
international order - Margaret
Satterthwaite , Special
Rapporteur on the independence of judges and
lawyers - Ben Saul, Special
Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights
and fundamental freedoms while countering
terrorism - Grażyna Baranowska
(Chair-Rapporteur), Ana Lorena Delgadillo Pérez
(Vice-Chair), Aua Baldé, Gabriella Citroni and Mohamed Al
Obaidi, the Working
Group on Enforced or Involuntary
Disappearances - Katarina Schwarz, the
Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery and
trafficking in persons - Claudia Flores
(Chair), Ivana Krstić (Vice-Chair), Dorothy Estrada-Tanck,
Haina Lu, and Laura Nyirinkindi, the
Working Group on discrimination against women and
girls - Cecilia M. Bailliet, Independent
Expert on human rights and international
solidarity - Graeme Reid, Independent
Expert on protection against violence and discrimination
based on sexual orientation and gender
identity - Leopoldo Maldonado Gutiérrez,
the
Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the
right to freedom of opinion and
expression - Mariângela Batista Galvão
Simão, the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to
the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical
and mental health - Gina Romero, Special
Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and
of association - Andrea Bolaños Vargas,
Special
Rapporteur on the situation of human rights
defenders - Morris Tidball-Binz, Special
Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary
executions - Nicolas Levrat, Special
Rapporteur on Minority Issues
African
Commission on Human and People’s Rights, Special
Mechanism
- Selma Sassi, Special
Rapporteur on refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced
persons and migrants in Africa, African
Commission on Human and Peoples’
Rights.
