Today, Explained - Deported to a country you've never heard of

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

How the Trump administration is using "third country deportations" to expel asylum seekers. This episode was produced by Peter Balonon-Rosen, edited by Jolie Myers, fact checked by Andrea López-Cruzado, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Bridger Dunnagan, and hosted by Miles Bryan. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're nearly a year into Donald Trump's second term, and there's been a few surprises. The guy who built a brand around being against regime change in foreign countries, taking over Venezuela and gunning for Greenland, it's a bit surprising to me, got to admit. Don't ask me, who's in charge, because I'll give you an answer, and it'll be very contrary. What does that mean? We're in charge. But one thing Trump has been super clear about is his opposition to asylum. He does not want asylum seekers coming to the U.S.

The ones that do come, he's deporting them. Often to countries they aren't from, countries they've never even heard of. Eswitini, South Sudan, Costa Rica. We know nothing about this country. We don't know language. We don't know culture. We don't have further. Third country deportations and the end of asylum as we knew it.

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up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash explained. That's betterhelp.com slash explained. He got in touch with one asylum seeker deported from the U.S. to a country he did not come from and followed his story for months. So his name is German Smyranov. That's his actual God-given name. I'm Russian, but my name is German. German the Russian? German the Russian, yeah. Incredible. German was a fitness coach in St. Petersburg.

But after he and his wife had a kid, he needed to make a little extra money. one of his clients was in local politics and suggested that he could make some extra money as a poll worker. Germans' job at the polling place was to basically just fill out like stacks of ballots for Vladimir Putin. Just put a mark next to Putin's name. They fraud on the elections and I wanted to reveal it. He decided to film himself filling out ballots and send that video to a video to a, a friend of his who was connected to the Anti-Corruption Foundation, founded by Alexei Navalny, who at that point had been murdered.

I thought at the time was a genius at this time that everything went by my plan. It was very exciting moment for me. But he never got the chance to do that because as he was leaving the building, he was stopped by security. They asked to see his phone, and they saw the video. They called the cops. I decided to escape and I just ran to the house

and ran all the way home he talks to a lawyer who suggests that he leaves the country and he told me that he had a friend who had been granted asylum in the U.S. And so that seemed like a really good option for him. The family flew to Turkey and then on to Mexico City

where they began the process of requesting asylum. I somehow get the sense this story is not about to end with him, you know, living a happy life with asylum here. What happens? So when they get to Mexico, that's when their problems really start. The Biden administration was requiring asylum seekers to register for their asylum appointments and their credible fear interviews. So he signed up for an appointment. And then they waited almost eight months. In the eight months that they're waiting, of course, the U.S. presidential election happens.

Donald Trump has been elected president. The 47th president of the United States. Right before inauguration day. So on January 14th, German and his family were notified that they were going to get an asylum interview. January 20th, all of those appointments were canceled. So they're kind of getting desperate. They decided. they're just going to drive up to the border

and present themselves for asylum, which they could have done at any point. When we came to the border, a supervisor, I think, a woman, asked us, why we came here? I told her, we came here to ask about political asylum. She told, we've got new president. We don't give political asylum anymore.

Read the newspapers and something like that. They were immediately placed in detention. They put us into the cell. The temperature was very cold. German was separated from his family. He was placed in a cell with a toilet in the middle of the room, brightly lit, cold, blasted with AC just to keep people uncomfortable. He was in there with 15 other people sleeping on the floor. Guards would mock and insult them. They had really poor hygiene, poor food. They were in detention for 31 days. German says he lost 25 pounds. during that time. And then one night they were woken up, flown to Arizona, then put on another plane, and they were told that plane was headed to Costa Rica. They told us, you're going to Costa Rica. You want it or you don't want it.

Germans part of a group of 200 migrants, including 81 children, that end up held in an old pencil factory. So it's not clear. how long they're going to be held there when they first arrive. I escaped one prison to get to another. This is a rusty old factory in the jungle. It's hot. It's buggy.

German and his family share a small windowless room with eight other people. The feelings every day are the same. A lot of stress, a lot of worries, a lot of fighting with despair. When we first spoke to him, he told us that the conditions were so much better there than they were at the U.S. border. Really? Yeah, the food was better. They had adequate food.

They had their phones. They could contact their families. But they just didn't know at that point what was next. Yesterday it was a very complicated day. My wife, she began to cry at the cafeteria during the eat because she was tired of all of this situation. and her mother calls her, and her relative calls her every day. And in her mind, she's already in Russia.

How is this all legal? Like, aren't there rules for asylum when somebody comes to the border and says they fear for their lives? Or they're in fear of political persecution, aren't they entitled to some standards of care? This is all legal because deportation is categorized as a sense. civil process, not a criminal one. Basically, deportation is not legally considered a punishment. It's considered a sovereign rights of the federal government to deport someone. And as a result, people in deportation proceedings just don't have the same level of constitutional protection. This idea of deportation as not being punishment is something that an immigration expert described to me as

the legal fiction underpinning all U.S. immigration enforcement. But that's actually why the places where prospective deportees are held are called detention centers and not prisons, which is what they actually are, because it's not criminal. That's why they can be held there indefinitely with no access to a lawyer, no court-appointed lawyer. There was a report that Amnesty released about this thing at Alligator Alcatraz called The Cage, which is like this two-foot-high metal box where detainees could be forced into in the hot Florida sun. You know, Amnesty International called that torture, but under U.S. law, there's like this twisted logic of, okay, there's no criminal case, so there's no punishment, and therefore, we're

not doing anything wrong, basically. So German and his family and a bunch of other people seeking asylum, they end up in this pencil factory in Costa Rica. This is all many months ago, right? So how does it play out? You know, where does German story end? So in April, Costa Rica issued a temporary status to the people at the pencil factory, which meant that they could leave. They were no longer detained. They could continue to use the pencil factory as shelter, but they were no longer trapped. You don't have to stay here, but you can stay here. But you can stay here. Yeah. And German and his family didn't have very many other options. They had few connections.

in the country. They couldn't speak the language. They weren't sure what they were going to do. So I worry about my wife. I just don't want to be a failure for my family. But, you know, all this... Some of the other people at the pencil factory started to melt away. Many went back to their home countries. Others went back to the U.S. border to try for asylum again.

And actually, a lot of those folks are currently in detention at the border indefinitely. Jeez. So none of this was encouraging to German. He did really debate about going back to the border. He has a really strong sense of fairness, and he was really upset about what happened to him. He just didn't think it was right. Who did he blame? I asked him, you know, as an American, like, how do you feel about the fact that I'm interviewing you?

How do you feel about my country? And he said, no, no, no, it's not your country. It's just a specific group of people. and they've created this image of an immigrant as a criminal and there's some use to this image. You know, I'm a fitness coach. I'm a fitness coach.

I never made a deep research about what the society feels about immigrants and I know when you speak about immigrants you mostly speak about criminals. So immigrant is equal to criminals right now in the people's mind Because that is image they create, and there are some reasons for this image being created. I know.

The nuance of that response was, it really struck me. He, like, sees the political value in demonizing him. 100%. Yeah, he really grasped that. But I never thought that I will be this faceless immigrant too. How typical is Germans' case? Is the case of all these people put on a flight to coast? Costa Rica. Like, where else are asylum seekers getting sent to? And how many people are we talking

about? We're talking about thousands of people since January 2025. Upwards of 8,000 people sent to countries that aren't their own. Like, you know, famously you've seen like El Salvador, South Sudan, but there's also other countries in Africa, Ghana, Eswatini, Panama. And they've faced really tough conditions there, right? Some of these people are being sent to prisons and war zones. there's violence, people have endured sexual abuse, disease, not to mention just the stress of it all. German and his family, you know, thankfully, did not end up going back to the border. Instead, they're in Costa Rica. Their status is still unclear.

German is working at a gym again. His wife is a barista. They're not making enough money. And they don't feel totally committed to Costa Rica, right? We know nothing about this country. We don't know language, we don't know culture. They're not sure that they want to settle here. But they're kind of like what else do we do at this point?

And we've got a plan how to live here right now. John Fasil, Snap Judgment from KQED Snap Studios. John's got a longer version of this story out now wherever you get your podcasts. Coming up, an O-Bit for American Asylum. Support for this show comes from Shopify. As the year ends, everyone is bold with their New Year's resolutions. But as January starts, the goals you set for yourself can seem more and more difficult. If your goal for 2026 was to start a new business, Shopify says they can help make that happen for you

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Go to Shopify.com slash explained. At Shopify.com slash explained. Hear your first this year with Shopify by your side. You're listening to Today Explained. We're back. It's Today Explained. I'm Miles Bryan. Micah Rosenberg is a national investigative reporter at ProPublica, who's covered immigration for many years. Lately, she's been reporting on third country deportations, too. This is really one of the most sort of novel and surprising things that the Trump

administration has tried. For years, multiple administrations have struggled with a particular issue of countries that have refused to take back their own nationals as deportees. And so during the first Trump administration, he forged agreements with some Central American countries to take back some deportees from different nationalities, but it was mostly, you know, regional migrants and they didn't really get very far. And this time around, they've really ramped up this strategy significantly. In a brief unsigned order, the court clearing the way for the Trump administration to swiftly deport migrants to countries where they have no previous ties.

Migrants from Afghanistan, Russia, Iran, and China were deported from the United States and dropped into Panama. Deport him to Uzbekistan. Eight migrants to South Sudan. From the U.S. to Uganda. Landed in Eswattini. They've signed these types of agreements with countries, including really, far-flung ones like House Sudan and Uganda, you know, they're really taking it to another level.

And one of the most sort of audacious and consequential deportation so far of Trump's presidency, he sent close to 230 Venezuelan nationals to a maximum security prison in El Salvador. 238 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador aboard three planes and now in that prison. The Trump administration deporting a Venezuelan asylum seeker who has no criminal record and who his family says is not a gang member. This footage distributed by the Salvadoran government shows the men arriving at the prison shackled. He accused them of being, you know, the worst of the worst, gang members. To expedite removals of the Trend de Aragua savage gangs, I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1780. Our reporting, you know, at ProPublica and with Venezuelan reporting partners, we found that the government knew that the vast majority of these men had never been convicted of any crimes in the United States, but they were sort of rounded up and whisked away to this prison where they were held for months before they were released in a prisoner exchange.

So this is something that has never really been tried before at this scale, and it's being challenged in court, but it's very difficult. to challenge because once, you know, these people are outside of the United States, they're mostly outside of the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. And so it's leaving a lot of people in very precarious situations. I think it would be helpful to kind of remind everybody, including myself, what this system and the process looked like before Trump started blowing it up. Like, can you paint us a picture of how this was working under the Biden administration? So during the Biden administration, this phenomenon of people arriving at the border and really turning themselves into border officials to claim asylum really exploded under the Biden administration.

And so the people that were coming and asking for refuge were overwhelming border stations. And many ended up being released into the country to make their claims in immigration court. What qualifies you for asylum is a really sort of narrow band of reasons. It's granted to people specifically who fear persecution because of their race, their religion, their nationality, their political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. These are defined in law. And the system has really been set up in the past, acknowledging that those things can be very difficult to prove, you know, especially if you're fleeing out of fear, you might not. not have all of the proof that you need. You're really running for your life. And that's why the court system was set up in this way. It was supposed to give people time to gather evidence, to

make their claims. I think there are a lot of people who were arriving at the border who really did have or do have legitimate asylum claims. They're fleeing for their lives. They're facing political persecution. But mixed in there, I think, are people who are coming for other reasons. They're facing a serious economic hardship or violence or really, you know, political and economic breakdown in their home countries. But what the Trump administration has done by believing that almost all of the asylum claims are fraudulent or not legitimate, they're really sort of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And advocates are saying that these changes have made it nearly impossible for legitimate asylum seekers to really get protection. How do people and countries, you know, far from the United States, find out or come to believe that flying to Mexico and then trekking to the border and then waiting at the border and then maybe turning themselves in was going to lead to a better life? Yeah. I think it's very different for every nationality and every group. But, yeah, there were, you know, there were WhatsApp groups. There were TikTok influencers, you know, who were advertising different routes for making it to.

United States. Acompaniamen this recorri-to-the-day how I did. People from countries deeper in South America, in India and parts

of Africa started understanding that they could come to the border and claim asylum and potentially be released to pursue their claims.

There were hundreds of thousands of people who were making a perilous trek on foot through the dangerous jungle

between Columbia and Panama. The conditions are incredibly harsh. We just saw a woman that nearly broke her ankle in the river. African and Indian migrants were going into debt for tens of thousands of dollars to pay for commercial and charter flights into Nicaragua and then to make their way through Mexico. Are you afraid you can die? Of course. Anything could happen to anybody on this route. Is anyone still getting asylum?

like, is this still happening at all? Or has Trump just turned the tap off completely? Well, you know, the Trump administration's goals of sealing off the border are really being accomplished in many ways. Border crossings have dropped to record lows and releases of people into the country to try and go through this core process have also really dropped. And so there has really been a reduction in the ability for people to see. seek protection here. So you're telling us this story of these huge swings in our asylum policy. It seems like a big hinge point or a reason that those swings are possible is because the policy is being set with executive orders, right? Like it's just the president saying something.

Do you think there's any possibility that Congress is going to actually make any meaningful changes to our asylum system? Or are we going to exist in this, you know, jarring timeline of swinging back and forth based on the executive orders of whoever is in the Oval Office indefinitely. Well, you know, everyone says that we are where we are right now because Congress for decades has never gotten around to passing any really meaningful, comprehensive immigration reform. So we're working with kind of an outdated system. So each president that comes in basically makes immigration policy through fiat and executive actions. And those can be challenged in court.

they can be quickly overturned if a different party comes into office. This is something that would take real meaningful bipartisan action. And there have been, you know, efforts over the years that came really close in the past where there were groups on both sides. I remember a gang of eight. There were a series of gangs. And they were always torpedoed for various reasons. So I think now it really doesn't look good for, you know, congressional action at this point. All of these changes are happening at a time where there's really an unprecedented explosion of need of people fleeing conflicts all over the world. Trump is part of a wave of politicians at the same time who have capitalized on concerns about rising immigration to countries across the globe. Politicians in places like Europe or even Canada have embraced.

some of the views that the Trump administration has about tamping down on migration, limiting access to asylum. This is somebody that's trying to extend their stay in Canada by abusing the asylum system. So we're going to amend the law to make it easier to make that case. I will bring back France's sovereignty in all areas, which means the freedom for the French people to decide for themselves and defend their interests. I will control immigration and reestablish security for all. Many countries in the past have really felt compelled to follow the U.S. lead on issues of human rights and protecting asylum seekers. But now, you know, these countries may end up following the U.S. lead in the opposite direction. Micah Rosenberg, ProPublica.

Our show today was produced by Peter Bellin-on-Rosen, edited by Jolie Myers, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Bridger Dunnigan, and fact-checked by Andrea Lopez Crusado. It was hosted by me, Miles Bryan. This is Today Explained. Thank you.