From the article:

Since then, Ehrhardt, 41, has crisscrossed Africa, trying to persuade the continent’s leaders to accept flights full of people deported from the United States even though the migrants are not their own citizens. These “third country” deportation deals, a controversial innovation of the second Trump administration, have become a central part of the president’s hard-line approach to immigration, and they’re negotiated by the office Ehrhardt now oversees.

He has been making rapid progress. The Trump 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 Washington Post. The documents, which have not been previously reported, provide the most comprehensive picture to date of the Trump administration’s fast-growing third-country network.

Under the arrangements, the U.S. has expelled migrants to countries across the globe where they have no previous connection. Early deals included flights to Costa Rica carrying migrants from China, Russia, Iran and Afghanistan and a flight to the tiny African kingdom of Eswatini with migrants from Vietnam, Laos, Cuba and Jamaica.

The agreements have been secured under the orders of Stephen Miller, a long-standing aide to the president who now serves as White House deputy chief of staff. Current and former officials say that Miller, known for his relentless anti-immigration focus, has been able to push key appointments at the State Department that have allowed him to overrule other foreign policy objectives in his goal of achieving more deportations.

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What countries get in return under these agreements varies significantly. The documents from inside the Office of Remigration reviewed by The Post show financial commitments that include $81 million in direct payments to 13 of the foreign governments. While that overall sum is small in terms of the U.S. budget, it often represents a massive expansion in funds being sent to authoritarian regimes that previously received smaller amounts from the United States. The deals were written through contracts designed to bypass statutory requirements, including human rights safeguards, that come with most foreign assistance spending, according to people familiar with the agreements.

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The deals also vary widely in size and scope, with foreign governments setting a range of conditions, according to the internal State Department documents. For example, Uganda will only take African nationals, while neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo has dictated the opposite, as it won’t accept anyone from Africa. Several countries, including the Central African Republic and Eswatini, have agreed to take violent criminals, but others such as Ghana and Sierra Leone only permit nonviolent offenders.

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Migrants whom the Trump administration has deported to third countries have alleged, in interviews and legal complaints, that they have been subjected to inhumane conditions — beaten by armed guards, denied food and prohibited from communicating with lawyers or their families.

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So far, the administration has deported more than 25,000 people to at least 28 third countries, according to an analysis for this story based on data collected from several independent sources, including Third-Country Deportation Watch — a tracking site run by Refugees International and Human Rights First — and the Berkeley Human Rights Center Investigation Lab. The vast majority, about 20,000, have been sent to Mexico, which has an informal agreement with the United States, and nearly all of the rest have been deported to countries in Africa and Latin America.

That is but a fraction of the 985,000 deportations that the Department of Homeland Security says it has carried out in Trump’s second term. But the policy has another significant impact: spreading fear and a deterrent message that migrants are better off returning home rather than risk being sent to an unknown location.