When U.S. immigration officials sent a Salvadoran man to Mexico, he relived the trauma he’d experienced when he’d fled his own country — trauma that had won him protection from deportation there.⁠
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Juan Antonio Pineda Vaquerano is among more than 300 people that the Trump administration has sent to countries where they have no ties after immigration judges granted them protection from deportation to their home countries because of legitimate fear of persecution or torture — people who fit the international definition of refugees — according to a report from Human Rights First. ⁠
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According to the report, the Trump administration has systematically targeted people who were granted protection from deportation as part of its third country removals program, breaking from decades of policies that allowed people with these protections to remain in the U.S. Many of those people had protection as members of the LGBTQ+ community from countries that do not allow those identities to exist freely.⁠
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Story by @katemorrisseyjournalist. Read more at the link in our bio.