Rising authoritarianism has accelerated and normalised mass deportation of migrants

Under President Donald Trump, the United States is expanding its efforts to detain and deport non-citizens at an alarming rate. In recent months, the Trump administration made deals with a number of third states to receive deported non-citizens.

In Australia, the Labor government has similarly established new powers to deport non-citizens to third states. The government signed a secretive deal with Nauru in September, guaranteeing the small Micronesian island A$2.5 billion over the next three decades to accommodate the first cohort of deportees.

In both countries, migrants can now be banished to states to which they have no prior connection.

Last year in the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour party promised that the previous Conservative government’s plan to deport people to Rwanda was “dead and buried”. Yet, Labour removed close to 35,000 people in 2024, an increase of 25% over the previous year.

Starmer has also proposed establishing “return hubs” in third countries for people with rejected asylum claims.

Meanwhile, the far-right Reform Party has put forward a “mass deportation” plan involving the use of military bases to detain and deport hundreds of thousands of people, if it wins power in the next general election.

Similar policies may soon come to Europe, too. In May, the European Commission published a proposal that would allow EU member...

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