Lawsuit
Published on September 8, 2025
Human Rights First and co-counsel the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigrant Justice Center, and the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies seek to challenge the Trump administration’s attempt to implement the “safe third country” provision of federal asylum law. That statutory provision allows the government to enter into international agreements for the purpose of removing asylum seekers from the U.S. to third countries that can hear their asylum claims, effectively outsourcing the U.S. asylum process. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) call these third country agreements “asylum cooperative agreements” (ACAs).
The law however imposes two critical restrictions on the ability to remove an alien under third country agreements like an ACA: 1) the third country must be safe for those removed, and 2) a “full and fair procedure” must be available to removed persons such that they will have a meaningful opportunity to pursue asylum.
The second Trump administration is aggressively using ACAs to deny asylum seekers’ protection applications and to deport them to countries that the U.S. State Department itself has reported are unsafe, present serious human rights concerns, and/or have weak or corrupt asylum systems. To date, the administration has entered into ACAs with Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, Uganda, Ecuador, and Belize. On information and belief, an ACA with Liberia has also been concluded but has not yet been published or publicly acknowledged.
