A report released Friday by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats concludes the Trump administration spent in excess of $40 million to deport roughly 300 migrants to nations where the migrants had no established ties.
The analysis shows the effort amounted to about $133,333 per individual on average. Costs paid for deportations to Rwanda were notably higher, at approximately $1.1 million per deportee; Rwanda took in seven people under the program.
Five countries - Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, El Salvador, Palau and Eswatini - received a combined $32 million of the total funds. According to the report, the money was transferred directly to those foreign governments. The State Department did not employ outside auditors to monitor how the funds were used, and the report indicates there was no system in place to track expenditures once transferred.
In a private interview cited by the committee staff, a U.S. official said the program was designed as an intimidation strategy and an expensive deterrent intended to pressure migrants to abandon asylum claims. The official also said destinations such as Palau, a Pacific island nation, and Eswatini, a kingdom in southern Africa, were selected in part to signal that migrants might be sent to remote locations far from their countries of origin.
The White House defended the policy as a necessary tool to remove undocumented individuals deemed criminals when their home countries refuse to accept them. Immigration advocacy organizations that are challenging the practice in court counter that it affects law-abiding non-citizens and exposes people to the risk of being sent to unfamiliar countries with limited opportunity to contest deportation.
The report raises questions about oversight and accountability tied to the transfers, noting the absence of independent auditing and a tracking mechanism to determine how recipient governments used the funds. Legal challenges to the policy are already under way, and advocates argue the approach places non-citizens in difficult positions with constrained avenues for contesting removal.
The findings spotlight the fiscal and procedural dimensions of the policy: significant per-person expenditures, concentrated payments to a handful of countries, and limited transparency around post-transfer use. The report frames those elements alongside competing statements from U.S. officials and groups pursuing litigation.