The Claim

Signed seven Safe Third Country agreements to facilitate and expedite deportations, defending the authority before the Supreme Court and winning.

The Claim, Unpacked

What is literally being asserted?

Three factual assertions: (1) seven “Safe Third Country” agreements were signed; (2) the purpose was to facilitate and expedite deportations; (3) the administration defended this authority before the Supreme Court and won.

What is being implied but not asserted?

That these are proper “Safe Third Country” agreements under U.S. immigration law — agreements with countries that have functioning asylum systems where deportees’ lives and freedom will not be threatened. That the Supreme Court validated the legality of these agreements on the merits. That the agreements are working to produce successful, lawful deportations. That the recipient countries willingly signed these agreements. That the seven agreements are new achievements of this administration.

What is conspicuously absent?

Any mention that these are formally called “Asylum Cooperative Agreements” (ACAs), not “Safe Third Country” agreements — a legally significant distinction the administration itself obscures. Any mention that at least two of the purported signatory countries — Guatemala and Honduras — publicly denied having signed Safe Third Country agreements when DHS Secretary Noem announced them. Any disclosure that the Supreme Court ruling (DHS v. D.V.D., June 2025) was a 6-3 procedural stay on the shadow docket, not a ruling on the merits — the Court did not find these agreements legal, it simply paused a lower court injunction while litigation continues. Any mention that the countries designated as “safe” include Uganda (where homosexuality is punishable by life imprisonment or death), and that deportees have been sent to South Sudan (where the U.S. State Department itself warns of “extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, torture”), Rwanda (with a “well-documented record of repression”), and Eswatini. Any mention that from Trump’s first term, not a single person sent to Guatemala under a previous ACA received asylum there. Any mention that the U.T. v. Bondi lawsuit is actively challenging the legality of these agreements in D.C. District Court, with ACLU, Human Rights First, and the National Immigrant Justice Center as counsel.

Evidence Assessment

Established Facts

The administration signed Asylum Cooperative Agreements with at least seven countries. As of January 2026, the U.S. had announced ACAs with Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, Paraguay, Belize, Uganda, and Liberia. These agreements are authorized under INA Section 208(a)(2)(A), which bars asylum for individuals who “may be removed, pursuant to a bilateral or multilateral agreement, to a country… in which the alien’s life or freedom would not be threatened” and where they would “have access to a full and fair procedure for determining a claim to asylum.” The administration labels these “Safe Third Country agreements”; the formal regulatory framework calls them “Asylum Cooperative Agreements,” and the distinction matters because the label “safe third country” carries specific legal requirements these agreements may not meet. [^034-a1]

Guatemala and Honduras publicly denied having signed Safe Third Country agreements. In June 2025, DHS Secretary Noem announced that Guatemala and Honduras had signed agreements to take asylum seekers. Guatemala’s presidential communications office stated “the government did not sign a safe third country agreement nor any immigration related agreement” during Noem’s visit. Honduras’ immigration director Wilson Paz also denied such an agreement was signed. Guatemala’s President Arevalo clarified that no new immigration accords were struck, and that the existing arrangement with the U.S. (from February 2025) was only for Guatemala to serve as a transit point for deportees returning to their home countries — not to host them as asylum seekers. The signed document was a memorandum of understanding for a Joint Security Program at Guatemala City’s airport, not a Safe Third Country agreement. [^034-a2]

The Supreme Court ruling in DHS v. D.V.D. (June 23, 2025) was a 6-3 procedural stay, not a merits ruling. The Supreme Court issued an unsigned order on the shadow docket staying a district court preliminary injunction that had required the government to provide notice and due process before deporting people to third countries. The Court provided no written reasoning. Justice Sotomayor, joined by Kagan and Jackson, dissented: “The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone, anywhere without notice or opportunity be heard.” The Court did not rule that these agreements are lawful, that the designated countries are “safe,” or that the deportation process is constitutional — it only stayed the lower court’s injunction pending appeal. [^034-a3]

The D.V.D. case involved third-country removals under the INA, not Safe Third Country/ACA agreements specifically. The D.V.D. litigation concerned DHS’s practice of deporting people to countries not specified in their removal orders under a separate INA provision allowing third-country removal when deportation to the home country is “impracticable, inadvisable, or impossible.” This is legally distinct from the Safe Third Country / ACA mechanism under INA Section 208(a)(2)(A). The Supreme Court stay in D.V.D. addressed third-country removals generally, not the specific ACA agreements the White House claims to have signed. The claim conflates two different legal authorities. [^034-a4]

INA Section 208(a)(2)(A) requires that Safe Third Country agreement countries meet specific safety and procedural standards. The statute requires that (1) the alien’s life or freedom would not be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion; and (2) the alien would have access to a full and fair procedure for determining a claim to asylum or equivalent temporary protection. Multiple legal experts and human rights organizations have assessed that several of the ACA countries — particularly Uganda, Guatemala, and Honduras — do not meet these statutory requirements. [^034-a5]

Several ACA countries have documented human rights crises that contradict the “safe” designation. Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act (2023) criminalizes same-sex relations with penalties up to life imprisonment and death in some cases. The U.S. State Department’s own human rights report describes extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, and torture in South Sudan. Human Rights Watch documented that deportees sent to Eswatini were held in Matsapha Correctional Complex “under harsh conditions.” A Gambian deportee sent to Ghana was returned to his country of origin despite U.S. courts having determined he faced persecution risk — a direct violation of non-refoulement. At a U.S. military base in Djibouti, deportees were held in converted shipping containers near “burn pits” emitting toxic smog. [^034-a6]

Not a single person sent to Guatemala under the previous ACA received asylum there. A congressional investigation found that during Trump’s first term (2019-2020), when ACAs were signed with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, no one transferred to Guatemala under the agreement received asylum. Only the Guatemala agreement was ever operationalized; the El Salvador and Honduras agreements were signed but never implemented. Biden suspended all three in February 2021. [^034-a7]

The U.T. v. Bondi lawsuit is actively challenging the legality of these agreements. Filed by the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, ACLU, Human Rights First, and the National Immigrant Justice Center, this case in D.C. District Court challenges the government’s ACA implementation as unlawful. The case was reactivated in October 2025 after the new agreements were signed. In December 2025, plaintiffs filed a second amended complaint adding challenges to the Belize and Liberia agreements. Class certification motions were filed in January 2026. The case remains pending. [^034-a8]

DHS is using ACAs to pretermit asylum applications en masse in immigration court. DHS attorneys in immigration courts have filed motions to dismiss asylum cases based on the ACA agreements, arguing that applicants have no right to seek asylum in the United States because they could seek protection in Honduras, Ecuador, or Uganda — countries they have never been to and have no connection to. DHS Secretary Noem ratified the ACA interim final rule on August 20, 2025. The Board of Immigration Appeals ruled in Matter of C-I-G-M- (2025) on the framework for applying ACA bars to asylum applicants. [^034-a9]

Strong Inferences

The claim deliberately uses the term “Safe Third Country” instead of “Asylum Cooperative Agreement” to exploit the rhetorical connotation of “safe.” The formal regulatory framework, the executive order itself (EO 14165 Section 8), and DHS’s own filings refer to these as “Asylum Cooperative Agreements.” The term “Safe Third Country” carries a specific connotation — that the recipient countries are safe places where deportees will be protected. By using this label rather than the formal name, the claim imports a safety guarantee that the agreements themselves do not provide and that the recipient countries’ human rights records do not support. This is not accidental; it is a terminological choice designed to pre-answer the most important question about these agreements: are the countries actually safe? [^034-a10]

The claim that the administration “won” before the Supreme Court misrepresents a procedural stay as a merits victory. DHS v. D.V.D. was decided on the shadow docket — an unsigned, unexplained order staying a lower court injunction pending appeal. Shadow docket stays are preliminary procedural actions that do not resolve the underlying legal questions. The Court explicitly did not rule on whether third-country deportations are lawful or whether the ACA countries are “safe.” Moreover, litigation continues: the D.C. District Court case (U.T. v. Bondi) challenging the agreements themselves remains active, and Judge Murphy’s underlying ruling that the administration must provide due process before third-country removals remains the law of the case on the merits, even though enforcement was stayed. Characterizing a procedural stay as “winning” before the Supreme Court is like claiming you won a trial because the judge didn’t grant a preliminary injunction. [^034-a11]

The seven-country count is disputed or inflated. At least two of the seven countries — Guatemala and Honduras — publicly denied signing Safe Third Country agreements. Guatemala clarified that its arrangement was for transit only, not for hosting asylum seekers. Honduras’ immigration director denied any such agreement existed. The administration may have signed memoranda of understanding or other documents that it characterizes as Safe Third Country agreements, but the counterparty governments do not share that characterization. If a bilateral agreement is denied by one party, its status as a binding agreement is questionable. [^034-a12]

Informed Speculation

The ACA strategy appears designed to serve two parallel purposes, neither of which is “facilitating deportations” in the way the claim implies.

The first purpose is procedural: by designating countries as ACA partners, DHS creates a legal basis to pretermit (dismiss) asylum applications in immigration court. If an applicant could theoretically seek asylum in Honduras, Ecuador, or Uganda, DHS argues they have no right to seek it in the United States. This does not require actually sending anyone to these countries — the mere existence of the agreement is enough to bar asylum claims. The primary function of the ACAs is not deportation logistics but asylum denial.

The second purpose is deterrence through cruelty: the spectacle of sending people to unfamiliar countries — South Sudan, Djibouti, Eswatini, Rwanda — where they have no connections, no language skills, no support networks, and face documented human rights risks, is designed to make seeking asylum in the United States so terrifying that people stop trying. This is revealed by the small actual numbers: with the exception of Mexico, each third-country destination has received at most a few hundred deportees. The policy’s impact is disproportionately psychological, not logistical.

The pattern of paying countries to accept deportees — $6 million to El Salvador, $7.5 million to Rwanda, $5.1 million to Eswatini — creates a market for human disposal. Countries that might otherwise refuse are incentivized to accept people they have no obligation to, creating a parallel deportation infrastructure outside the reach of U.S. courts and the protections of U.S. law.

Structural Analysis

Terminology as manipulation: The single most important analytical lens for this claim is the deliberate use of “Safe Third Country” instead of “Asylum Cooperative Agreement.” Under INA Section 208(a)(2)(A), a “safe third country” must meet specific statutory requirements: no threat to life or freedom, and access to a full and fair asylum procedure. By labeling these agreements “Safe Third Country” agreements, the administration linguistically asserts that the recipient countries meet these requirements — a conclusion that the agreements’ texts do not establish, that the countries’ human rights records contradict, and that ongoing litigation actively contests. The label does the argumentative work that the evidence cannot.

Stated vs. revealed preferences: The claim states these agreements are about “facilitating and expediting deportations.” The revealed preference — shown by DHS attorneys using ACAs to dismiss asylum cases rather than to arrange actual transfers — is that the agreements exist primarily to eliminate asylum eligibility rather than to arrange deportations. The actual number of people deported to third countries (outside Mexico) remains in the hundreds, not thousands. The agreements’ real function is as a legal weapon against asylum claims, not as a deportation mechanism.

The attribution problem: The claim attributes a “win” to the administration before the Supreme Court. The D.V.D. stay was a procedural action on the shadow docket, not a substantive victory. And crucially, D.V.D. concerned third-country removals under a different INA provision than the Safe Third Country / ACA mechanism. The claim conflates two distinct legal authorities — the INA provision allowing removal to third countries when the home country won’t accept deportees, and the Section 208 safe third country bar on asylum — and presents a procedural outcome in one as a substantive victory for the other.

Follow the money: The payments to recipient countries — $7.5 million to Rwanda, $6 million to El Salvador, $5.1 million to Eswatini — reveal that these are not agreements between willing partners who believe in shared responsibility for refugee protection. They are transactions in which the U.S. pays countries to absorb people it wants to remove, regardless of whether those countries can provide safety or due process. This is outsourcing, not cooperation.

Cui bono: The primary beneficiaries are the political apparatus (dramatic enforcement spectacle and systematic asylum denial) and the recipient country governments (cash payments and U.S. diplomatic favor). The primary losers are asylum seekers who may have valid claims but are now barred from presenting them in U.S. courts, and deportees who face documented human rights risks in countries they have no connection to.

Context the Framing Omits

The only prior Safe Third Country agreement — with Canada — has been continuously contested for 20 years. The U.S.-Canada Safe Third Country Agreement, in effect since 2004, is the only agreement that has functioned as a genuine safe third country arrangement (between two countries with robust asylum systems). Even this agreement has faced sustained legal challenges — in 2023, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld it only narrowly, and Canadian civil liberties groups have repeatedly called for its suspension, particularly after Trump’s first-term immigration policies raised questions about whether the U.S. itself qualifies as “safe.” The idea that countries like Uganda, Honduras, and Liberia can replicate what Canada provides is not a serious legal or policy position.

Trump’s first-term ACAs failed completely. The 2019 agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras produced zero successful asylum outcomes. Only the Guatemala agreement was ever implemented, and a congressional investigation found not a single person transferred there received asylum. The agreements were suspended under Biden in 2021. The current agreements are a repeat of a policy that already produced a documented zero-percent success rate for asylum seekers.

The UN has raised specific concerns about these deportations. In July 2025, UN human rights experts expressed alarm at the resumption of U.S. deportations to third countries, warning that the practice violates the principle of non-refoulement — the international legal prohibition on returning people to countries where they face persecution or torture. The UN Convention Against Torture, to which the U.S. is a party, explicitly prohibits this.

District courts have found the deportation practices unlawful on the merits. While the Supreme Court stayed the D.V.D. injunction procedurally, the underlying district court ruling by Judge Murphy found that DHS cannot send people to third countries without first attempting to send them to their country of citizenship and without providing meaningful notice and a chance to express fear of torture. This merits finding remains the law of the case and will need to be resolved on appeal. Calling this “winning” ignores that the only merits ruling went against the government.

The March 2026 First Circuit ruling does not validate the agreements. On March 12-16, 2026, the First Circuit ruled 2-1 to allow DHS to continue third-country removals pending appeal, lifting Judge Murphy’s order. But this ruling, like the Supreme Court stay, was procedural — it did not address whether the third-country removal policy or the ACA agreements are lawful on the merits. The underlying legal questions remain unresolved.

Verdict

Factual core: Partially true, significantly inflated. The administration signed agreements with approximately seven countries that it calls “Safe Third Country” agreements, though they are formally Asylum Cooperative Agreements — a legally distinct category. At least two signatory countries (Guatemala and Honduras) publicly denied having signed such agreements. The Supreme Court issued a procedural stay allowing third-country deportations to continue pending appeal, but did not rule on the merits of either the agreements or the deportation practices.

Framing as “win”: Substantially misleading. Five layers of misrepresentation:

1. Terminological manipulation. These are “Asylum Cooperative Agreements,” not “Safe Third Country” agreements. The label “safe” is doing rhetorical work that the facts cannot support — not when ACA countries include Uganda (life imprisonment/death for homosexuality), and deportees have been sent to South Sudan (extrajudicial killings, torture per the U.S. State Department’s own assessment) and held in shipping containers near burn pits in Djibouti.

2. Disputed agreements counted as signed. Guatemala and Honduras publicly denied signing Safe Third Country agreements. Guatemala clarified its arrangement was for transit only, not hosting asylum seekers. Honduras’ immigration director denied any agreement existed. Counting agreements the other party denies signing inflates the total.

3. Shadow docket stay presented as “winning.” The DHS v. D.V.D. ruling was an unsigned, unexplained 6-3 procedural stay on the shadow docket. The Court did not rule on the merits — it did not find these agreements legal, these countries safe, or these deportation practices constitutional. The only merits ruling (Judge Murphy’s district court order) went against the government. Calling a procedural stay a “win” misrepresents how the Supreme Court works.

4. Wrong legal authority cited. The D.V.D. case concerned third-country removals under a general INA provision, not the Safe Third Country / ACA mechanism under Section 208. The claim conflates two distinct legal authorities, presenting a procedural outcome in one as a validation of the other.

5. Zero track record. The previous version of these agreements (Trump 1.0 ACAs with Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras) produced a documented zero-percent asylum success rate. Not one person transferred to Guatemala received asylum. The current agreements replicate a policy that already failed by its own stated metrics.

What a reader should understand: The administration signed agreements with several countries — formally called Asylum Cooperative Agreements, not Safe Third Country agreements — that it uses primarily to dismiss asylum applications in immigration court rather than to arrange actual deportations. At least two signatory countries publicly denied signing what the administration describes. The countries designated as “safe” include Uganda (where homosexuality carries the death penalty), and deportees have been sent to South Sudan, Rwanda, and Eswatini under separate but related third-country removal arrangements — countries with documented records of extrajudicial killings, repression, and inhumane detention. The Supreme Court did not validate these agreements on the merits; it issued a procedural stay on the shadow docket while litigation continues. The prior version of these agreements under Trump’s first term produced zero successful asylum outcomes — not a single person transferred to Guatemala received protection. Human Rights Watch, UN human rights experts, and a coalition of legal organizations including the ACLU and Human Rights First have concluded that the agreements violate international law and expose deportees to persecution and torture. The claim calls these “wins”; the evidence shows they are mechanisms for eliminating asylum eligibility and outsourcing human rights obligations to countries that cannot meet them, funded by U.S. payments to create a market for human disposal.

Cross-References

• Item #30: “Invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport brutal Tren de Aragua gang members” — the AEA deportees were sent to El Salvador under a third-country removal arrangement, not under a Safe Third Country/ACA agreement. Both claims share the pattern of using maximalist legal authority for deportation spectacle while bypassing due process. El Salvador’s role as a deportee-receiving country (CECOT) is directly connected to both claims.
• Item #35: “Secured El Salvador’s agreement to accept deportees of any nationality, including violent criminals” — El Salvador’s arrangement is a removal/detention agreement, not a Safe Third Country/ACA agreement. The distinction matters: El Salvador was paid $6 million to imprison deportees, not to provide them asylum procedures. This represents the third-country removal track, while Item #34’s agreements represent the asylum-denial track. Together they constitute a two-pronged strategy: use ACAs to bar asylum claims, and use removal agreements to send people to countries that will detain them.

Sources

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