“A phone call (could) come at any given time, telling me that my wife is out of this country. That’s the fear that I have every single day until I get her home, and that right there scares the living everything out of me,” Secah Shahib expressed with deep concern.
Ramdial Shahib’s health complications have intensified her already precarious situation, according to her lawyer.
“She needs to be in the care of a doctor instead of immigration detention,” King emphasized.
Widespread Implementation
Under the Trump administration’s second term, there has been a notable increase in sending immigrants and refugees to countries with which they have no affiliation. This policy impacts migrants who have legal protection against deportation to their countries of origin. They face prolonged detention in facilities while the Department of Homeland Security attempts to secure their acceptance by other nations.
Frequently, these individuals are transferred to Mexico, but some are sent to areas plagued by conflict, disease, and human rights abuses, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, despite U.S. travel advisories against visiting these regions.
Immigration law experts have highlighted the unprecedented use of third-country deportation during Trump’s second term. According to The Midwest Newsroom, at least 34 countries have agreed to accept deported migrants, including Costa Rica, Equatorial Guinea, and Uzbekistan.
The 1951 Refugee Convention and the U.N. Convention Against Torture prohibit deportation of individuals granted withholding or deferral of removal due to persecution. Nonetheless, a segment of the Immigration and Nationality Act allows for the relocation of non-citizens to third countries when deportation to their home nation is deemed “impracticable, inadvisable, or impossible.”
“Even though (the policy) will only be applied to a small number of people, it could conceivably be applied to literally every asylum seeker in the United States, millions and millions of people,” Bram Elias, a law professor and director of the Immigration Advocacy Clinic at the University of Iowa, explained.
Elias further stated that the ambiguity surrounding third-country deportations has fueled anxiety within immigrant communities. Since January 2025, nearly 20,000 immigrants have been redirected to nations other than their own, as noted by Third Country Deportation Watch.
Of those deported since 2025, over 80% have returned to their countries of origin, as per a Senate Foreign Relations Committee Minority report from earlier this year. The full financial implications of this deportation strategy remain uncertain, though estimates suggest a taxpayer expenditure of up to $40 million.
According to a statement from DHS, the practice is justified to expedite the removal of individuals “who are so uniquely barbaric that their own countries won’t take them back.”
Investigations by The Midwest Newsroom revealed at least 30 individuals in ICE custody within the region who have been, or are being considered for, removal to third countries. Several have established lives in the U.S. over many years, while others were detained upon entry and request for asylum.
Yael Schacher, director of Americas and Europe at Refugees International, commented, “The Trump administration is basically telling people who are in asylum proceedings, ‘If you don’t agree to return to your home country and give up your asylum claim, we’re going to deport you to some random country.’
Advocates and legal experts argue that the prospect of ICE detention is alarming for migrants, given the reported substandard conditions in some facilities. Since January 2025, ICE records indicate 52 detainee deaths.
‘They Released Me on U.S. Soil’
Alisa Ramdial Shahib’s journey to the U.S. began with a visitor visa, she recounted to The Midwest Newsroom. This visa permitted her temporary stay in the country. She settled in Tampa, Florida, where she married her first husband, Rodney London, as detailed in court records.
After attempting a modeling career, she joined London’s commercial cleaning business. London, a fellow Trinidadian immigrant, assisted her with immigration paperwork. The couple eventually had a daughter.
In 2010, Ramdial Shahib was interrogated by police concerning a narcotics investigation involving her husband, as documented in the criminal report. Overwhelmed, she consented to a search of her purse, which led to her arrest for drug trafficking and possession after officers discovered oxycodone and hydrocodone, according to police records. Ramdial Shahib claimed ignorance of London’s illegal activities but was detained in the county jail.
“Because of all (my husband’s) illegal transactions, I am sitting in this jail for almost seven months now,” she wrote to a Tampa judge in March 2011.
