SouthernWorldwide.com – Thousands of asylum seekers are abandoning their cases as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attempts to deport them to third countries they have no connection to.
This trend has stalled numerous immigration cases and prompted many individuals to give up their claims for asylum, according to an analysis of federal data and interviews with legal experts.
Willian Yacelga Benalcazar’s experience exemplifies this situation. After fleeing threats from criminal gangs in Ecuador, he sought asylum in the U.S. However, he was ordered deported to Honduras, a country he had never been to.
Yacelga spent five months in ICE detention, enduring illness, food scarcity, and contaminated water. The prospect of prolonged detention and his deteriorating health led him to abandon his asylum case and agree to be sent back to his native Ecuador.
“I believe we abandoned the asylum case because the lawyer told me I could be in detention for three, four additional months. I was already sick in there. I couldn’t take it anymore,” Yacelga told CBS News from Ecuador.
He further stated, “All I wanted was to get out, to be free, because it’s horrible being locked up in there.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed Yacelga entered the U.S. illegally and was deported to Ecuador on April 16.
The Trump administration’s aggressive pursuit of third-country deportations has significantly impacted asylum seekers. Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, described these deportations as being “more about fear than scale.”
An estimated 17,500 individuals have been deported to third countries since President Trump took office, with the majority sent to Mexico. This number, though significant, represents a small fraction of the total deportations carried out during his term.
However, the threat of third-country deportation has affected a much larger group. Over 75,500 asylum cases have seen a motion to “pretermit,” or terminate proceedings without a hearing on the merits, according to a CBS News analysis of immigration court data.
These “pretermit” motions became more common after a Board of Immigration Appeals ruling in October 2025. This ruling mandated that immigration judges must first address motions for third-country removal before considering asylum eligibility.
These third countries have entered into “asylum cooperative agreements” with the U.S. government, allowing for the redirection of asylum seekers. This policy forces individuals to seek refuge in nations other than the United States.
Following this decision, immigration attorneys reported that nearly every asylum seeker they represented had to demonstrate fear of persecution not only in their home country but also in third-party nations like Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Uganda.
ICE has not provided comments regarding its third-country deportation efforts or detention facility conditions.
Data through March 31 indicates that approximately 16% of asylum seekers, roughly 12,300 individuals, withdrew or abandoned their asylum claims or agreed to voluntarily depart the U.S. after a motion to pretermit was filed.
“The third countries people are being removed to are often very dangerous countries themselves that don’t have a functioning asylum system,” stated Victoria Neilson, supervising attorney at the National Immigration Project.
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She added, “There’s a lot of reasons for people to be afraid and I guess choose the devil you know over the one you know nothing about.”
Asylum Cases in Limbo
Immigration court data reveals that over 24,000 individuals have received removal orders to countries with which the U.S. has asylum cooperative agreements, following a motion to pretermit their cases. ICE has not disclosed the exact number of actual deportations.
Some individuals, like Yacelga, may ultimately seek to return to their home countries.
Immigration attorneys express skepticism about the feasibility of deporting such large numbers of people to these third countries under the existing agreements. For instance, Honduras has agreed to accept only 10 non-Honduran deportees per month, despite over 6,300 non-Hondurans having deportation orders to that country by the end of March.
As of late April, only about 60 individuals had actually been removed to Honduras, according to Third Country Deportation Watch.
“I believe what we’re seeing now is the inevitable result of forcing judges to order immigrants deported to third countries that have not agreed to accept them,” said Adriana Heffley, an immigration attorney in Atlanta, Georgia.
“There are thousands of people now with deportation orders that cannot be carried out,” she added.
In mid-March, ICE attorneys reportedly received an email instructing them to cease filing new pretermit motions, according to The Seattle Times. However, cases with already filed motions were permitted to proceed.
DHS has not commented on this directive.
A federal lawsuit challenging the practice of pretermitting asylum cases under third-country agreements is currently underway. The lawsuit alleges the government is undermining due process and that the partner countries lack adequate asylum systems.
Immigration court data shows that approximately 13,300 cases, more than half of those with third-country removal orders, are currently stalled as immigrants appeal their removal orders. Appeals temporarily halt deportation proceedings.
The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which makes the final decisions on appeals, had ruled on less than 1% of these appeals by the end of March. Last year, the BIA took an average of two years to decide an appeal.
Precedent-setting BIA decisions under the current administration have overwhelmingly favored the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Facing Third-Country Removal from Detention
For the roughly 1,800 individuals in detention with third-country removal orders as of the end of March, the indefinite wait for an appeal ruling can be more distressing than the threat of deportation itself, according to advocates and lawyers.
While the BIA’s processing time for those in detention is faster, it still averaged about 10 months last year.
Before Yacelga relinquished his asylum case, he was moved between five detention facilities across the country. During some transfers, he was handcuffed for an entire day. He spent most of his time in Eloy, Arizona, far from his family and legal team in New York.
For over a month, his family and attorney were unaware of his whereabouts. A judge had denied his request for bond release.
“Unless a federal court steps in and says that their detention is unreasonable or illegal and they release them — otherwise, they will keep you there,” explained Carlos Trujillo, an immigration attorney in Provo, Utah.
“It’s the psychological warfare of trying to push you to just give up,” he added.
A DHS spokesperson stated that Yacelga crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in August 2023 and was ordered deported to Ecuador by an immigration judge last month. The spokesperson also noted Yacelga’s arrest for larceny and criminal possession of stolen property.
“President Trump’s message has been clear: criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S. If you come to our country and break our laws, we will find you, arrest you, and deport you,” the spokesperson wrote.
Yacelga claims he was never prosecuted, and the charges were pending at the time of his detention, according to ICE data.
Two weeks after his deportation to Ecuador, Yacelga reported experiencing sleep difficulties and ongoing symptoms from the virus he contracted in detention, which has left him too ill to work.
“Everything, all the money I had earned, everything I had, I left it with them so they could survive during the time I was detained,” he said, referring to his family in New York.
“What I want is to forget all that and start over because it was horrible being imprisoned without having committed any crime, just for wanting to, well, try to take care of your family.”
About the data
CBS News analyzed data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) concerning immigration court proceedings for individuals with asylum cases from January 1, 2025, to March 31, 2026. While the data does not explicitly state whether pretermission motions are filed due to asylum cooperative agreements or other BIA rulings, interviews with immigration attorneys and data from the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies suggest that the majority of recent pretermission motions are related to third-country removals.
Additionally, although the data includes the date of voluntary departure decisions, it lacks a specific field for the date an asylum application was withdrawn. Interviews with immigration attorneys and previous EOIR data analyses indicate that most withdrawals occurred after a pretermission motion was filed.
Camilo Montoya-Galvez contributed to this report.
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