By TIM Editorial | Based on original reporting by CNN’s Isobel Yeung and Mick Krever
U.S. courts had protected two LGBTQ migrants from return to their home countries. An investigation by CNN found that they were instead sent to unfamiliar countries where they feared for their safety. Their cases raise a difficult question: what does protection mean when the destination changes?
Aylin went to the United States hoping to live openly and safely. The 28-year-old Turkish woman told CNN that threats from a religious group and a family member had driven her to leave home. An immigration judge later granted her withholding of removal, a legal protection that prevented her deportation to Türkiye because of the danger she faced there.
That ruling did not keep her in the United States.
After approximately 18 months in U.S. detention, Aylin said she was placed on a flight in July 2026. She learned during the journey that she was being taken to the Central African Republic, a country she had never visited. CNN used the name Aylin to protect her identity.
In Bangui, the country’s capital, she told CNN she was frightened to go outside. She had escaped threats in Türkiye, but had no established life, support network or clear long-term future in the place where she had been sent. After several weeks, she decided to return to Türkiye despite her fears.
Her experience illustrates a growing controversy over third-country deportations: removals to a country other than a person’s country of nationality or origin.
Third-country deportations have raised questions about the safety of LGBTQ migrants sent to countries they have never visited.
Why a court order did not stop Aylin’s removal
The distinction between asylum and withholding of removal is central to Aylin’s case.
Asylum can provide a route to remain in the United States and, subject to legal requirements, seek a more permanent status. Withholding of removal offers a narrower protection. It bars removal to the particular country where a person is likely to face persecution, but it does not itself grant permanent immigration status or categorically prohibit removal elsewhere.
For migrants, that distinction can have life-changing consequences. A court may recognize that returning someone home would be dangerous while the government still seeks another country willing to receive them. The next question is whether that proposed destination is safe for that individual.
The Trump administration has expanded the use of third-country arrangements. CNN reported that it had reached at least 35 agreements with receiving countries in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere. The number of LGBTQ people transferred under those arrangements is unclear because publicly available U.S. government figures do not identify how many deportees had sought protection on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
A second case, and a different destination
CNN also reported the experience of Adwoa, a 21-year-old bisexual woman from Ghana. She said hostility and violence connected to her sexuality had prompted her to seek protection in the United States. A U.S. court protected her from deportation to Ghana, but she was subsequently sent to Cameroon.
Adwoa told CNN that she felt unsafe there and had been staying in a government-run detention facility. Like Aylin, she was identified by a pseudonym because of concerns about her safety.
Cameroon criminalizes consensual sexual relations between people of the same sex, with penalties of up to five years in prison. Human Rights Watch has also documented arrests and abuse affecting LGBTQ people in the country. Those conditions do not, by themselves, establish the outcome of Adwoa’s individual legal case. They do explain why advocates question whether a third-country transfer can be treated as safe simply because the receiving government agrees to accept someone.
The Central African Republic presents a different legal picture, but Aylin’s concerns cannot be dismissed on that basis. A 2023 U.S. State Department human-rights report described restrictions affecting public same-sex activity and said social and legal conditions made maintaining a same-sex relationship extraordinarily dangerous. The practical risk to an LGBTQ person can depend on both the written law and how authorities and communities behave.
What the U.S. government and advocates say
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has defended third-country removals, saying they are lawful and that people subject to removal receive due process. In its response to CNN, the department argued that such arrangements are necessary to enforce removal orders.
Immigration advocates disagree with the government’s account of the safeguards. Bridget Crawford of Immigration Equality, an organization that provides legal services to LGBTQ migrants, told CNN that people sent to unfamiliar countries may lack family ties, support, secure status and a meaningful opportunity to establish their safety. Those difficulties can be especially severe when the destination is hostile to LGBTQ people.
The disagreement is therefore about more than whether U.S. law permits removal to a third country in principle. It is also about notice, the chance to challenge a proposed transfer, and the assessment of harm in the specific destination.
The legal challenge is still unfolding
On 18 September, a U.S. federal appeals court upheld key parts of a lower-court ruling against the administration’s procedures for rapid third-country removals. The courts questioned whether affected people had a meaningful opportunity to raise safety concerns before being sent elsewhere. The administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene on 24 September.
The proceedings have not resolved every individual deportation case. They do, however, put a fundamental safeguard under scrutiny: if a person says the proposed third country also places them at risk, when and how must that claim be heard?
For Aylin, the consequences are already personal. Back in Türkiye, she told CNN she had concealed her sexuality from her family and hoped to leave again. For Adwoa, the uncertainty continues in Cameroon.
Their accounts show why the destination matters as much as the act of deportation. Protection against return to one dangerous place may offer little security if the person is transferred to another where they cannot live safely.
Editor’s note: The accounts of Aylin and Adwoa come from CNN’s reporting by Isobel Yeung and Mick Krever. Their names are pseudonyms used by CNN. TIM Editorial has added legal context and country-condition information from the sources cited above.
