Trump Deported Nearly 13,000 Non-Mexican Undocumented Migrants To Mexico, Report Finds

Look, President Donald Trump might not be the first president to deport undocumented migrants en masse, but there’s no denying that his administration’s approach to mass deportation has been one that seems to be indifferent to human suffering at best, and intentionally cruel and bigoted at worst. So, it should come as no surprise that since the start of the administration’s immigration crackdown it has deported nearly 13,000 Cubans, Venezuelans and other nationals to Mexico, a country where they have never lived and are unfamiliar with, leaving them vulnerable to cartel violence in a land where they are strangers.

The number of non-Mexican immigrants deported to Mexico was revealed in a report by Human Rights Watch released Wednesday. The report states that between Jan. 20, 2025, and March 9, 2026, the United States deported nearly 13,000 people to Mexico who were not from Mexico, and that such deportations are still ongoing. The report also notes that Cubans make up the largest share of those deportees, with an estimated 4,353 deportations between January and March, and that Cubans weren’t really targeted this way before Trump took office last year.

From the HRW report:

For years, Cuban nationals were not a primary target of US deportation policy, in part because Cuba often refused to accept certain deportees, leaving many with longstanding but unexecuted removal orders. As a result, many had lived in the United States for years or decades, building families, working, and putting down roots, often with US-citizen partners and children.

That changed sharply under the second administration of US President Donald Trump, which made mass deportation a central policy objective. During the 2024 campaign, Trump pledged to begin “the largest deportation program in American history,”[1] and after taking office his administration moved to expand both deportation pathways and agreements with third countries willing to receive deportees from elsewhere. Neither the United States nor Mexico has made public the agreement or arrangement under which these deportations are taking place.

Trump took office and decided his legacy to white America would revolve around ridding the U.S. of Black and brown foreigners. That’s why he widened the net for priority targets, and it’s why judges have had to block him from targeting documented immigrants as well. And, as we have reported extensively, his administration has repeated the narrative that it is going after the “worst of the worst” in “criminal illegal aliens,” but the data has consistently shown the overwhelming majority of his thousands of deportees have had no violent criminal history or no criminal record at all. According to HRW researchers, more than half the Cubans deported had a criminal record, but only 16% were for violent crimes.

The report also states that most of them were detained at routine check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and that none of them were given their day in court to contest their deportation to Mexico, even when they expressed fear for their safety.

Then there’s the fact that many of the deportees are old — far too old to have their lives uprooted from a country where they have been living since the 1980s and ’90s, and brought to a country they know nothing about.

From the Associated Press:

While Mexico has accepted these types of deportations for years, the deportees under the Trump administration are older and have lived in the U.S. for longer than in the past, making it more difficult for them to find work and increasing the urgency of the need for medical care.

The report, which is based on more than 50 interviews in the southern Mexican cities Tapachula and Villahermosa, comes as U.S. President Donald Trump has expanded immigration enforcement to carry out his mass deportation plan.

This has meant that immigrants who were not previously targeted, such as Cubans with years or decades living in the U.S., have been caught up in the immigration dragnet. Some countries, such as Cuba and Venezuela, limit deportation flights or don’t accept deportees at all, so they are instead sent to Mexico or other countries with which the U.S. has struck deals.

“Imagine being 60 or 70 years old, uprooted from your life overnight and sent to a country you don’t know, where authorities leave you out to dry without access to even the most basic services — shelter, healthcare. Imagine being dropped in dangerous cities with nothing but the clothes on your back,” said Alcira Hava, Leonard H. Sandler Fellow at Human Rights Watch, who worked on the report.

Mind you, just last week, we reported that the Trump administration announced that it is increasing the number of white South African migrants it will welcome into the U.S., because they are refugees, according to Trump, who has spent years lying about a fictional “white genocide” that only exists in his non-reality, where white people are the true victims of systemic racism. So, imaginary genocides get white immigrants a free ride to the U.S., while brown people are being sent to countries they are not from and placed in real danger, with no regard for their safety or humanity.

There are plenty of humane ways the U.S. can handle its immigration crisis. The Trump administration seems very deliberate in choosing none of them.

SEE ALSO:

2 Judges Grant Stay For Exonerated Man Trump Admin Is Trying To Deport

ICE Director Blames 2-Year-Old Child’s Killing On Deported Mother