In the middle of the Arizona desert in June, at Eloy Detention Center, Dolores Freixa opened her eyes at 3 a.m. to the sound of an officer telling her to get up and collect her things. She was being transferred, but no one told her where. 

Freixa described one other woman and about 40 men getting on the bus with her beneath the dark desert sky. She was the only Cuban. When she asked the men what was happening, they told her they had voluntarily signed up to return to their home country: Mexico. 

Freixa had never agreed to be taken to another country.

Third-country deportations allow for the removal of immigrants even when their home countries refuse to take them back. More than 25,000 people have been sent to 29 countries, according to the Third Country Deportation Watch, a project of Refugees International and Human Rights First to monitor data on third‑country deportations. 

In February, a federal judge in Massachusetts blocked third-country deportations, acknowledging deportees’ right to notice and to challenge their removal. 

But The Trib found that the ruling did not stop ICE from attempting to take people to the border without notice while the judicial block was in effect, according to interviews with migrants and immigration attorneys. Transfers between detention centers and paperwork presented under stressful conditions, sometimes alongside warnings of worse consequences for refusing to sign, can leave detainees caught in bureaucratic confusion and turmoil. In such circumstances, migrants may agree to leave the country without understanding what they are signing, attorneys told The Trib.

Freixa refused to sign the paperwork and was taken back to Arizona, but she was an exception.

“We are seeing a pattern where they are put on a bus without being told anything, taken to the Mexican border, and forced to get off,” said immigration attorney Liudmila Marcelo. “It happened to a client of mine. In his case, he refused to get off. Others did get off, and once they did, they accepted their deportation. My client has also been asked several times to sign documents.”

A DHS spokesperson asked The Trib to identify the migrants by name and date of birth who relayed that they had been pressured to self-deport. When The Trib declined to disclose their identities, the spokesperson replied by email: “When the media refuses to give names, it makes it impossible to provide details on specific cases or even verify any of this even happened or that the people even exist. If you can’t do your job, we can’t do ours.” 

The spokesperson also said, “It is categorically false we would pressure someone to self-deport.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has since allowed third-country deportations to resume.

As of May, Cubans were the largest group of deportees to third countries, most of whom had been taken to Mexico, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. Most Cubans in the United States live in Florida, with Miami-Dade County home to the largest concentration of Cubans outside the island.

Some Cubans who lost their permanent resident status after criminal convictions continued living in the country under orders of supervision, since the government could not carry out their deportations. They were required to report to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and, if they complied with their reporting requirements and had no new criminal offenses, could apply for work permits.

Under this arrangement, some spent decades rebuilding their lives in the United States – and most often in Florida. 

Now, the government is seeking to deport them to third countries. That’s Freixa’s story.

She arrived at age 11 during the 1980 Mariel boatlift and was arrested in 2015 on charges including burglary, theft and fraud-related offenses. After serving her sentence, she was transferred directly to immigration detention earlier this year.

“The U.S. government wants to deport as many people as possible, and one way is creating contracts with countries around the world that will accept deportees for cash. Unfortunately, a lot of Cubans have removal orders, and they’re shooting fish in a barrel because these people have, for decades, been reporting to ICE offices, following the law and doing what they’re supposed to do,” said immigration attorney Andrea Jacoski.

The agreement with Mexico is not public, leaving questions about the Mexican government’s responsibilities when receiving these migrants. 

In the same report, Human Rights Watch found that migrants dropped off in Mexico have no clear path forward. They are given 10 days of permission to stay in the country, after which they must begin their own asylum-seeking process. They are left with no clear path to shelter, food or health care. The organization also found that migrants are left in cities where they are vulnerable to smuggling networks, extortion rings and human traffickers.

In August, other Cuban residents of South Florida were deported as far as Africa, the Miami Herald reported. The deportations have prompted protests, particularly because some of the countries receiving migrants are under U.S. State Department travel advisories warning of widespread violence and insecurity.

“The law allows for third-country removal, but to a safe third country. And so that ‘safe’ is the operative and very important word, because so many of these countries where people are being deported to are not safe. They’re in the middle of civil war or there’s internal conflict, such that it’s not safe for people to go there,” said Jacoski.

A DHS spokesperson told The Trib that migrants who refuse to return to their home countries are sent to a safe third country, emphasizing that the decision to return home is theirs. “If an illegal alien chooses to file a claim in court refusing to go to their home country, we are required by law to find a safe and secure nation for them to go to. If an illegal alien chooses to go home, we will give them a free flight home and a $3,000 check. The choice is theirs,” the spokesperson said in an email.

When Freixa arrived at the border, she remembered a warning from her friend and fellow detainee back in Arizona and from her lawyer. She told the officer it was illegal to drop her off. She said the officer then showed her a self-deportation document and asked whether the signature was hers. It wasn’t.

She kept repeating that the removal was illegal and that they had to put her back on the bus.

Freixa was taken back to Eloy Detention Center, but the legal protections that allowed her to protest at the Mexican border have vanished after the Supreme Court allowed third-country deportations to resume. 

“I think people have come to believe there’s a binary of deserving and non-deserving immigrants, and that people with criminal histories, regardless of their equities or their family ties or how long they’ve been here deserve to be deported,” said Jacoski, the immigration attorney. “When in reality, nobody deserves to have their human rights violated. Nobody deserves to suffer needlessly in a country that they don’t know. Nobody deserves to really be the poster child for human suffering.”

Zoe Millán is a journalist and graduate of the M.S. at Columbia School of Journalism and a summer 2026 fellow with The Florida Trib. You can reach Zoe at zoe.millan@floridatrib.org.