François Picard is pleased to welcome Washington Post national security reporter Adam Taylor.The Forbidden Stories consortium, involving France 24 and 25 other media outlets, has spent six months investigating the thousands of people abruptly deported from the United States to third countries, amid concerns over due process and their ability to challenge their removal. The investigation examines how the Trump administration has made deportation a major focus of both US immigration and foreign policy. It raises fundamental questions about due process and non-refoulement: the principle that people should not be returned to places where they face persecution or torture - as deportees can be sent to countries with which they have no connection and, in some cases, where they may face persecution, torture or prolonged detention.
Taylor attributes the broader shift to Stephen Miller and a small group of allies within the Trump administration. His description is that officials have redirected parts of the State Department’s refugee-related machinery toward negotiating deportation arrangements with third countries that rely heavily on US humanitarian aid. According to Adam Taylor, the investigation found that third-country deportation arrangements have become a major "diplomatic" priority for the State Department.
A relatively small new office, described as the The Office of Remigration, is involved in this work, parts of the State Department’s refugee machinery have been redirected toward negotiating these arrangements. Taylor describes the sheer volume of deportation arrangements and cases as making it difficult for journalists, lawyers, legislators and advocacy groups to scrutinize and challenge each development. Stephen Miller as a deterrent message, a test of legal protections, and part of a volume of cases that risks overwhelming scrutiny and desensitizing the public.
As Taylor explains, this goes far beyond an expansion of immigration enforcement. He points to an institutional transformation in which the machinery of American diplomacy itself has been dramatically redirected toward deportation whereby agreements with foreign governments become a central instrument of migration policy. Taylor also identifies a less visible consequence: normalization through scale.
As deportations multiply, he suggests, individual cases risk losing their ability to command public attention. The investigation therefore shifts the lens from isolated stories of removal to the diplomatic and bureaucratic infrastructure making those removals possible - revealing how immigration policy can reshape not only borders, but the priorities and purposes of the institutions charged with conducting American foreign policy. The legal dimension Taylor emphasizes is especially timely: on September 18, 2026, the First Circuit upheld a ruling that the administration's third-country deportation policy was unlawful because migrants had not been given sufficient notice and opportunity to raise fear-based objections.
The administration, meanwhile, insists that third-country removals are necessary for people subject to final removal orders who cannot be returned to their countries of origin. The Trump administration will most likely fight the ruling, so it may end up going back to the Supreme Court. While the High Court has not yet issued a final ruling on the policy's ultimate legality they have already intervened twice to allow third-country deportations to continue while litigation continues.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
