GENEVA – 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.
“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.
