EDITOR’S NOTE: This article summarizes The Washington Post’s Sept. 21, 2026 investigation, as carried by republishing outlets. The figures below come from internal government records reviewed by the Post, which Zark News has not independently examined.
The Trump administration has created a new office inside the State Department — the Office of Remigration — to negotiate and run third-country deportation deals, according to The Washington Post’s investigation, as republished by Channel 1 LA. The office has about 15 employees and is led by career diplomat Christian Ehrhardt, 41, who spent nearly two decades in the department’s security branch focused on embassy protection before being summoned to Washington last year to lead the initiative. Ehrhardt has crisscrossed Africa trying to persuade leaders to accept flights of people deported from the United States even though the migrants are not their countries’ citizens. In mid-June he visited senior officials in the Ivory Coast, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Togo and Gabon, according to the Post investigation.
The administration has authorized or pledged at least $410 million to facilitate agreements with 31 countries, mostly in Africa and Latin America, as of the end of June, according to internal government records reviewed by the Post. The deals include at least $81 million in direct payments to 13 foreign governments, according to Dainik News Live, summarizing the investigation. The U.S. has also promised $179 million to the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and $124 million to the UN refugee agency for projects linked to refugees and infrastructure in these countries.
The arrangements vary by country, according to Michael D. Sellers’ analysis of the agreements: Uganda will accept African nationals but no one with a criminal history; the Democratic Republic of Congo will accept non-Africans, including people with criminal records, with as many as 2,000 slots; Ghana and Sierra Leone will accept only nonviolent offenders; the Central African Republic and Eswatini will accept some people with violent convictions; Guinea-Bissau agreed to as many as 1,000; Equatorial Guinea to 250. Many of those slots remain unfilled.
Early deals sent migrants to Costa Rica and Eswatini, including people from China, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and Jamaica, according to Dainik News Live.
The State Department’s planned reorganization explicitly states that its refugee bureau will now largely focus on efforts to “return illegal aliens to their country of origin or legal status,” according to Reuters reporting from 2025 on the earlier $250 million shift of refugee aid to “self-deportations.” The programme has been strongly associated with Stephen Miller, the senior White House official and longtime Trump adviser focused on immigration restrictions, according to Dainik News Live.
According to officials familiar with the agreements, the new arrangements replace legally binding human-rights and asylum guarantees with less-enforceable assurances exchanged between governments, Sellers’ analysis reports — with little indication of follow-up or enforcement of the terms intended to protect deportees.
Sources: Washington Post investigation via Channel 1 LA, Archynewsy, Dainik News Live, Sellers Substack, Reuters via SRN News