How Trump turned a refugee bureau into a $410 million deportation operation

How Trump turned a refugee bureau into a $410 million deportation operation - Washington Post

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!Photo illustration collage centered on Donald Trump, surrounded by U.S. officials, stacks of cash, airplanes, and migrants being escorted onto flights. Red stripes weave through the black-and-white images over fragments of the U.S. currency.!Photo illustration collage centered on Donald Trump, surrounded by U.S. officials, stacks of cash, airplanes, and migrants being escorted onto flights. Red stripes weave through the black-and-white images over fragments of the U.S. currency.

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How Trump turned a refugee bureau into a $410 million deportation operation

Inside the secret deals powering the president’s push to deport migrants to countries not their own.

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*(Illustration by Klawe Rzeczy for The Washington Post; AFP/Anadolu/Getty; iStock)

pol-forbidden deportations - deep vertical for MOBILE FINAL (Illustration by Klawe Rzeczy for The Washington Post; AFP/Anadolu/Getty; iStock)*

By

David Nakamura

and

Adam Taylor

September 21, 2026 at 1:00 a.m. EDT

Today at 1:00 a.m. EDT

The U.S. diplomat arrived in West Africa in mid-June with little fanfare, hopscotching along the Atlantic coastline for scheduled visits with senior government officials in the Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Togo and Gabon, whose president greeted him inside an opulent seaside palace.

The American, a career State Department official named Christian Ehrhardt, was an unlikely diplomatic VIP. For nearly two decades, he served as an officer in the agency’s security branch, focusing on embassy protection, before being summoned to Washington last year to lead a new initiative — the Office of Remigration.

Since then, Ehrhardt, 41, has crisscrossed Africa, trying to persuade the continent’s leaders to accept flights full of people deported from the United States even though the migrants are not their own citizens. These “third country” deportation deals, a controversial innovation of the second Trump administration, have become a central part of the president’s hard-line approach to immigration, and they’re negotiated by the office Ehrhardt now oversees.

He has been making rapid progress. The Trump administration has authorized or pledged at least $410 million to facilitate agreements with 31 countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America, as of the end of June, according to internal government records reviewed by The Washington Post. The documents, which have not been previously reported, provide the most comprehensive picture to date of the Trump administration’s fast-growing third-country network.

Under the arrangements, the U.S. has expelled migrants to countries across the globe where they have no previous connection. Early deals included flights to Costa Rica carrying migrants from China, Russia, Iran and Afghanistan and a flight to the tiny African kingdom of Eswatini with migrants from Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and Jamaica.

The agreements have been secured under the orders of Stephen Miller, a long-standing aide to the president who now serves as White House deputy chief of staff. Current and former officials say that Miller, known for his relentless anti-immigration focus, has been able to push key appointments at the State Department that have allowed him to overrule other foreign policy objectives in his goal of achieving more deportations.

Ehrhardt is “considered a White House envoy” when he meets with foreign leaders, said a U.S. official familiar with his meetings. “The messaging is not just that he is a deputy assistant secretary of state. He’s really part of the White House, so they roll out the red carpet.” This official, like many others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal State Department operations.

*Christian Ehrhardt leads the Office of Remigration, a division of about 15 employees at the State Department. (State Department)*

What countries get in return under these agreements varies significantly. The documents from inside the Office of Remigration reviewed by The Post show financial commitments that include $81 million in direct payments to 13 of the foreign governments. While that overall sum is small in terms of the U.S. budget, it often represents a massive expansion in funds being sent to authoritarian regimes that previously received smaller amounts from the United States. The deals were written through contracts designed to bypass statutory requirements, including human rights safeguards, that come with most foreign assistance spending, according to people familiar with the agreements.

The Office of Remigration — a division of about 15 employees in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) — marks an extraordinary break in U.S. foreign policy, inverting the nation’s long-standing commitment to resettling refugees in need into an intensive focus on expelling them from the country. The office’s name itself is a point of contention, as the term “remigration” has been popularized by white nationalists in Europe who seek the expulsion of racial minorities and immigrants.

The administration also has pledged grants totaling $179 million to the International Organization for Migration and $124 million to the U.N. Refugee Agency for refugee- and infrastructure-related projects in the third countries. Those organizations are not directly party to the deals, but that money has been negotiated by the foreign governments in connection to their deportation agreements, according to the government documents and people familiar with the deals. These payments have largely replaced voluntary contributions the U.S. government traditionally made to the global aid organizations and are used as “sweeteners” to get foreign countries to accept the third-country deportees, people familiar with the deals said.

Other documents showed the administration was in negotiations to pay millions more in potential deals with some of the countries Ehrhardt visited in June.

Total pledged: $81M

The U.S. has pledged at least $410 million to support third country deportation efforts, including $81 million in direct payment to more than a ==dozen governments.==

*(The Washington Post)*

The administration pledged to grant hundreds of millions ingrants to organizations, such as the ==International Organization for Migration.== The organizationsdonot participate in the deals directly, with the funds instead negotiated between governments as part of the agreements.

*(The Washington Post)*

Among the organizations is the ==U.N. Refugee Agency,== whichhelps immigrants seeking asylum in third countries.

*(The Washington Post)*

The rest of the money was committed to ==other organizations.==

*(The Washington Post)*

The deals also vary widely in size and scope, with foreign governments setting a range of conditions, according to the internal State Department documents. For example, Uganda will only take African nationals, while neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo has dictated the opposite, as it won’t accept anyone from Africa. Several countries, including the Central African Republic and Eswatini, have agreed to take violent criminals, but others such as Ghana and Sierra Leone only permit nonviolent offenders.

The through line, according to current and former State Department staffers, is that the administration is locking in the agreements as quickly as possible. Despite mounting costs and complexities, they said, the contracts require minimal oversight over how the money is spent and how the migrants are treated, even though some of the third countries are ruled by authoritarian regimes.

The State Department’s own human rights reports — intended as a tool to prevent foreign assistance from going to repressive governments — include accounts of serious abuses in several of the countries. Last year, for example, U.S. diplomat