Intercept Investigation: More Than 25,000 People Deported by DHS to Third Countries Under Trump

An Intercept investigation published September 29, 2026 reports that “more than 25,000 people have had their lives upended” by DHS deportations to third countries — nations that are neither a deportee’s country of birth nor of prior residence — under the Trump administration; the article does not specify an official DHS source document for that figure, and confirmed research (2026-09-30, see verify-25000-third-country-deportation-figure-dhs-attribution in cascade-research) found no in-text attribution at all — DHS is the sentence’s grammatical subject (the deporting agency), not a cited data source. A near-identical figure — “more than 25,000” deported to third countries since January 2025, refined to “at least 25,447… across 28 countries” as of 2026-08-31 — was published eight days earlier, September 21, 2026, by France24 and other outlets as part of “The Deportation Project,” a Forbidden Stories-led consortium of 26 news organizations (including The Washington Post and The Guardian) drawing on flight-tracking data (Human Rights First’s ICE Flight Monitor), the Third Country Deportation Watch tracker (Refugees International), the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center, FOIA requests, and interviews — not a DHS release. Whether the Intercept is itself a consortium partner could not be confirmed (full 26-outlet roster not published); the Intercept piece does not name Forbidden Stories or any consortium. No DHS/ICE-published third-country removal count was found on dhs.gov or ice.gov, and no aggregate total appears in D.V.D. v. DHS (No. 1:25-cv-10676, D. Mass.) filings or the 1st Circuit’s September 18, 2026 opinion. The piece documents the business infrastructure behind the flights, naming Avelo Airlines, Salus Worldwide Solutions, and CSI Aviation among the contractors involved, and describes Salus and CSI’s “questionable provenance” in the operation. It includes a photo of an ICE flight operating out of King County International Airport (Boeing Field) in Seattle on August 23, 2025.

The investigation sits downstream of the legal architecture it documents: the Supreme Court’s 6-3 D.V.D. ruling permitted third-country deportations without meaningful opportunity to contest removal (2025-06-23–scotus-enables-third-country-deportations-dvd); Judge Murphy later found the policy unlawful and documented Torture Convention violations on the merits (2026-02-25–judge-murphy-third-country-deportation-policy-unlawful); and the First Circuit affirmed in September that removals require notice and a chance to raise fear claims (2026-09-18–first-circuit-affirms-dvd-third-country-removals-require-notice-fear-claims). Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons separately admitted in May he “didn’t know some countries existed” that the agency was deporting people to (2026-05-05–ice-director-lyons-admits-didnt-know-deportation-countries-existed-third-country-program). This entry adds the first cumulative-scale figure — 25,000-plus people — to a program previously documented case-by-case and flight-by-flight, including the August 2026 reporting on coordinated Iran deportation flights (2026-08-18–intercept-ice-coordinated-iran-deportation-flights-during-twelve-day-war).