1. United States
2. Maine
3. Letter

THIRD-COUNTRY TRANSFERS MUST STOP UNLESS STRONG SAFEGUARDS ARE IN PLACE As your constituent, I urge you to act immediately to stop unsafe immigration enforcement practices that remove people from the United States and transfer them to third countries where they may have no legal, family, cultural, or safety connection. Congress must require transparency, individualized legal review, and binding safeguards against persecution, torture, and onward transfer to danger. These transfers create grave risks. People may be sent to unfamiliar countries without adequate notice, legal review, family contact, language ability, or protection from further deportation. Some may face detention, abuse, disappearance, or family separation. Others may be sent to countries where they face persecution, torture, or other serious harm, or may later be transferred again to the very countries they originally fled. CONGRESS MUST NOT ALLOW U.S. PROTECTIONS TO BE EVADED People who already received U.S. protection against return to persecution or torture may still be sent to third countries. Those countries may later transfer them back toward danger. That makes legal protection meaningless. If the United States recognizes that someone is likely to face persecution or torture, it should not use a third country as a workaround. That undermines U.S. law and the Convention Against Torture. SECRECY, TAXPAYER FUNDING, AND EXECUTIVE POWER REQUIRE OVERSIGHT Reports indicate that these agreements may involve undisclosed arrangements, diplomatic pressure, visa threats, tariffs, or taxpayer payments. Congress should not allow public money to support transfer systems run by governments that may lack adequate safeguards or credible human rights protections. Congress must oversee executive actions that may expose the United States to legal, diplomatic, financial, and humanitarian harm. FAMILIES AND VULNERABLE PEOPLE ARE AT RISK Third-country transfers can separate families and long-settled residents from their communities. They can also place refugees, asylum seekers, religious minorities, LGBTQI+ people, political dissidents, and torture survivors in countries where they may have little protection or support. Immigration law can be enforced without abandoning due process, transparency, and humane treatment. I urge you to take the following actions: (1) Prohibit transfers to third countries unless there has been full individualized legal review and a clear finding that the person will be safe there. (2) Bar taxpayer funding for third-country transfer agreements that risk detention, abuse, family separation, or return to persecution or torture. (3) Require full disclosure to Congress of all third-country transfer agreements, payments, side arrangements, and implementing documents. (4) Hold oversight hearings on the legal, diplomatic, financial, and human consequences of these agreements. (5) Insist that the United States honor its domestic and international obligations not to send people to places where they face persecution, torture, or other grave harm. Thank you