Alisa Ramdial Shahib sketches roses, hearts, butterflies and golf clubs to send to her family. This is the first time she has been away from her 8-year-old son. She is also separated from her daughter, who is attending college, and her husband, Secah Shahib. Ramdial Shahib has been in immigration custody in Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, since March — with no criminal charges.
Ramdial Shahib mails every drawing to her husband, who lives 140 miles away in Independence, Missouri. He carefully places each drawing between the pages of an old Life magazine so they don’t fold or crumple. One reads: “Blessed by God, spoiled by my husband,” in cursive script.
The Department of Homeland Security ordered Ramdial Shahib to be deported, but she has a “withholding of removal,” her lawyer told The Midwest Newsroom. That means she is safe from deportation for now but still in ICE detention.
Ramdial Shahib said she came to the U.S. at age 19 from Trinidad and Tobago. Decades later, the life and the family that she worked for decades to build are at risk.
“My whole life has been here,” she told The Midwest Newsroom in a video call from the Chase County Detention Center. “All I know is America.”
Arrested immigrants such as Ramdial Shahib confront more questions than people in her situation did before President Donald Trump’s second term. If she is deported, she doesn’t know if it will be to her native Trinidad and Tobago, where she said she would fear for her safety, or to a place she’s never been.
The Trump administration has aggressively sought so-called third-country deportations in cases where there are obstacles to deporting immigrants to their countries of origin.
Ramdial Shahib, now 46, has previous drug felony convictions, barring her from any path to legal status, her immigration lawyer told The Midwest Newsroom. Not even marrying her U.S. citizen husband would make her a naturalized citizen.
“Once you’ve touched anything that’s related to drugs, under immigration law, you’re barred for life,” said the family’s lawyer, Maya King, who has worked on similar third-country deportation cases across Kansas and Missouri.
Ramdial Shahib and her family wait, crippled with uncertainty, as ICE searches for a country in which to deport her.
“A phone call (could) come at any given time, telling me that my wife is out of this country. That’s the fear that I have every single day until I get her home, and that right there scares the living everything out of me,” Secah Shahib said.
Ramdial Shahib’s situation has grown more dire as she deals with medical issues, her attorney said.
“She needs to be in the care of a doctor instead of immigration detention,” King said.
Rapid expansion
The Trump administration has been sending immigrants and refugees to countries they have no connection to since the president’s second term began.
Migrants with legal protection against deportation to their home countries are being detained for months in jails or detention centers as the Department of Homeland Security searches for nations that will accept them.
Many are sent to Mexico, but in some instances, immigrants are sent to regions afflicted with war, disease and human rights violations. This includes countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the United States advises against travel for citizens.
In his second term, Trump has used third-country deportation at rates unlike past presidents, immigration law experts told The Midwest Newsroom. And, at least 34 countries have agreed to receive deported migrants. They include Costa Rica, Equatorial Guinea and Uzbekistan.
Under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the U.N. Convention Against Torture, the federal government cannot deport people who have been granted a withholding or deferral of removal by a judge due to persecution in their home country. Part of the Immigration and Nationality Act allows DHS to send non-citizens to other countries if deportation to their origin nation is “impracticable, inadvisable, or impossible.”
“Even though (the policy) will only be applied to a small number of people, it could conceivably be applied to literally every asylum seeker in the United States, millions and millions of people,” said Bram Elias, law professor and director of the Immigration Advocacy Clinic at the University of Iowa.
Elias said the uncertainty of third-country deportations has instilled fear in immigrant communities across the nation. Since January 2025, nearly 20,000 immigrants have been sent to countries other than their own, according to Third Country Deportation Watch, which tracks the removals.
Of the people deported since 2025, more than 80% have been sent back to their home nations, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee Minority report released earlier this year. The complete cost of expansion of third-country deportations is unknown, the report said. But, it could total up to a taxpayer-funded $40 million.
DHS argues that the practice allows the swift removal of people, “who are so uniquely barbaric that their own countries won’t take them back.”
Through public records searches, The Midwest Newsroom identified at least 30 people in ICE custody in the region that the DHS tried or successfully removed to third countries. Some have built lives here over decades. Some were taken into immigration custody as soon as they entered the United States and asked for asylum.
“The Trump administration is basically telling people who are in asylum proceedings, ‘If you don’t agree to return to your home country and give up your asylum claim, we’re going to deport you to some random country,’” said Yael Schacher, director of Americas and Europe at Refugees International.
Other immigrant advocates and lawyers said the threat of ICE detention is frightening for migrants in the United States, where conditions at facilities can be subpar, according to a report from KFF. Since January 2025, ICE data shows 52 people have died in the agency’s custody.
‘They let me out on U.S. soil’
Alisa Ramdial Shahib came to the United States on a visitor visa, she told The Midwest Newsroom. It allowed her to stay in the country, but only temporarily. She began her new life in Tampa, Florida, where she soon met and married her first husband, Rodney London, court records show.
After some trial and error with a modeling career, she worked for London’s commercial cleaning business, Ramdial Shahib said. London, also a Trinidadian immigrant, helped her fill out the paperwork to update her immigration status as time went on. They soon had a daughter.
In 2010, police questioned Ramdial Shahib about a narcotics investigation involving her husband, according to the criminal report. Exhausted and confused, she said she let them check her purse for drugs. After finding oxycodone and hydrocodone, the officers arrested her on charges of drug trafficking and possession, the police records show. Ramdial Shahib said she had no knowledge of London’s trafficking and oxycodone business, but officials placed her at the county jail.
“Because of all (my husband’s) illegal transactions, I am sitting in this jail for almost seven months now,” she wrote to a Tampa judge in March 2011.
While in custody, doctors told Ramdial Shahib she had cancer, she wrote in a 2010 letter. She could hardly walk or speak. Some days, she collapsed from exhaustion. A surgeon offered a procedure involving taking out her thyroid, she said.
“One of the nurses said to me in my ear, because I (could) hardly speak, that if you do this surgery, do it for your daughter,” Ramdial Shahib said in a jail video call with The Midwest Newsroom.
The Midwest Newsroom contacted the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office to confirm Ramdial Shahib’s medical problems and procedures while in custody. A spokesperson for the department said in an email the office does not release “information regarding the health status or medical condition of current or former inmates.”
Ramdial Shahib pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance and three counts of drug trafficking. She spent almost four years at the Hillsborough County Jail and nearly two years in a Florida state prison, according to court records and the Florida Department of Corrections. She served five years of probation after her release in 2016.
Throughout her time in custody, Ramdial Shahib also fought her deportation to Trinidad. At the time, she feared reprisals from her very strict religious family.
A judge granted Ramdial Shahib a withholding of removal under the Convention Against Torture. Ramdial Shahib applied to be released from extended supervision so she could move to Missouri in late July 2017, and a judge approved it the next month.
“They let me out on U.S. soil and told me to go ahead and live my life,” she told The Midwest Newsroom.
‘I thought I was free’
Some migrants are in the United States for minutes before border officials detain them. Jose Yugar-Cruz, a Bolivian citizen and torture survivor, entered the country through Arizona in the summer of 2024. Border officials arrested him immediately, court records show.
A judge denied Yugar-Cruz’s application for asylum while he was detained, according to public documents. But, he was granted a withholding of removal under the Convention Against Torture and could not be sent to Bolivia. While detained, Homeland Security authorities tried to send Yugar-Cruz to Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Mexico and Canada, according to court records. After filing a writ of habeas corpus, which requires DHS to legally justify keeping someone in custody, Yugar-Cruz prevailed in court and was released.
“I thought I was free from the government and the ICE raids,” he said in Spanish at a June neighborhood meeting with immigration attorneys in an Iowa City suburb.
On April 8, 2026, Yugar-Cruz walked into what he assumed was a routine immigration check-in. Instead, officers detained him again and moved him to an Iowa jail. He was on the manifest for a deportation flight to the Democratic Republic of Congo — a country undergoing war and an Ebola outbreak — scheduled for April 15, according to court documents. But, Yugar-Cruz’s attorney swiftly filed an emergency motion to stop his removal, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported.
Hours later, a U.S. court judge for the Southern District of Iowa barred the DHS from sending Yugar-Cruz anywhere outside the country or district until further notice, the article said.
On May 29, officials granted Yugar-Cruz temporary release from custody, leaving him safe from deportation for now. More than 250 people, including activists, elected officials and clergy, joined him at his ICE check-in days later. The turnout was organized by immigration advocacy group Escucha Mi Voz. Yugar-Cruz and three other immigrant families successfully returned to their Iowa homes.
“Thank you to everyone who stood with me and raised their voice against third-country deportations,” Yugar-Cruz said, addressing his supporters after the appointment. “This victory belongs to all of us, but the struggle for justice is far from over.”
Few legal options
Many immigrants facing third-country removals have fought for due process through the courts. Like Yugar-Cruz, detainees can file a writ of habeas corpus to challenge detention. If DHS cannot justify the detention, the detainee is released. But, migrants on ICE holds must wait until they have been in detention for a prolonged time before filing a writ — usually six months or more, immigration attorneys told The Midwest Newsroom
In early 2025, a high-profile attempt to stop third-country deportation involved eight migrants the Trump administration sent to South Sudan, an African country facing a refugee crisis and a civil war, Reuters reported. The group included three men with criminal records living in Iowa and Nebraska.
The deportees’ lawyers argued that sending the migrants to South Sudan would be a form of cruel punishment, therefore violating their constitutional rights, according to the habeas corpus writs filed. In July 2025, the Supreme Court said that the DHS could proceed with the deportation to South Sudan. And the court granted a stay in the case DHS v. D.V.D., meaning third-country removals could continue.
There are three main types of agreements that make up the third-country deportation policy, according to Third Country Deportation Watch. Asylum Cooperative Agreements with other nations allow people who wanted to seek asylum in the United States to go look for it in another country, the site says. Fewer than 200 people have been removed under these contracts, Schacher told The Midwest Newsroom.
Under temporary transfer agreements, migrants are sent to third countries usually for repatriation to their home nation. Nearly 25 people are deported to Costa Rica each week under this arrangement, Reuters reported.
The United States also has arrangements with El Salvador, Eswatini and South Sudan to imprison transferred immigrants before returning them to their country of origin, according to Third Country Deportation Watch.
“I’ve heard of people getting sent to various countries, and I’ve also heard of those people getting hurt as well,” said Mary Choate, executive director of Center for Legal Immigration Assistance in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Potential third-country deportees usually are unaware of where they could be sent until it is already too late. Removal proceedings can happen quickly when ICE finds a country to accept them.
“Oftentimes these individuals can’t get jobs where they’re going,” Choate said. “A lot of times, they don’t know the dangers in which they’re going into. A lot of times, they have no choice but to go.”
King, Alisa Ramdial Shahib’s lawyer, said she believes the political climate and increased federal funding of the DHS for immigration enforcement contribute to longer detentions as immigrants await third-country removals.
“It’s $130 a day per bed, per person,” King said. “Contractors want to make that money, and (ICE has) to spend that money.”
A Missouri family waits
Alisa Ramdial Shahib never expected to say “I do” over the phone in a jail 140 miles from her partner, Secah Shahib. They planned to wed in July after a decade together, but marrying sooner than planned felt necessary.
On March 25, Secah Shahib sat at his living room table on speaker phone with his wife and a minister who married them.
The pair met in Tampa, Florida, after Ramdial Shahib’s release from prison almost a decade ago. The couple welcomed a son in 2018.
Before her detention, Ramdial Shahib accompanied her husband to the golf course on weekends. He’s an award-winning PGA Golf professional who teaches the game for a living. Ramdial Shahib drove the cart, filled the cooler with drinks and snapped pictures for Instagram and Facebook.
That all stopped after Feb. 28. Independence Police arrested Ramdial Shahib after her department store boss accused her of stealing a $28 robe, according to the police report. No charges were filed, but authorities placed her on an ICE hold, later moving her to the Kansas facility, her attorney said. After more than a decade of ICE check-ins and annual driver’s license renewals, Ramdial Shahib was back in custody.
She is afraid to go back to Trinidad, because she believes her ex-husband, London, is there and could harm her. Her lawyer said her client’s drug convictions could also put her in danger.
“There are a lot of people who will be looking for you or your family and trying to kill you,” King said.
Ramdial Shahib could also be transferred to a larger facility like CoreCivic’s Midwest Regional Reception Center in Leavenworth, Kansas, or the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, Louisiana, because they are more equipped to deal with medical issues like the ones Ramdial Shahib is facing.
Not being able to see his wife in person has taken a toll on Secah Shahib as time passes.
“My world is really crumbling,” he said. “I’m hurting inside.”
Shahib contacted his congressman Rep. Emanuel Cleaver for assistance. After a few email exchanges, he said, nothing was done. Most of the information shared by Cleaver’s office was that which the family already knew, Shahib said. This included a suggestion to reach out to the Enforcement and Removal Operations office.
Shahib said he was disheartened at what he saw as a lack of effort from Cleaver. The legislator told The Midwest Newsroom in an email that his office was “currently working with the family to provide assistance and bring her home.” When asked about specific measures being taken, Matthew Helfant, a spokesperson for Cleaver, said they submitted an official inquiry to ICE and forwarded the information to the family.
“We remain ready and willing to assist in the effort to return her to her family,” Helfant said.
Shahib said he finds strength through his faith in God, golf, his mother, children and his wife. They plan to file a writ of habeas corpus for her release in August.
“There’s certain things in life, if you can overcome (them), you feel like you can overcome anything that life presents,” he said. “I would say this right here: We overcome this. I get my wife home. There’s nothing that we can’t face together.”
The Midwest Newsroom is an investigative and enterprise journalism collaboration that includes Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. There are many ways you can contact us with story ideas and leads, and you can find that information here. The Midwest Newsroom is a partner of The Trust Project. We invite you to review our ethics and practices here.
METHODOLOGY
For this article, Steph Conquest-Ware requested, obtained and reviewed public records from law enforcement agencies and courts in Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Florida and other states. They interviewed Alisa Ramdial Shahib, detained in Kansas, four times via video calls in June and July 2026. They interviewed Secah Shahib in person and corresponded with both spouses via text over the course of several months. Conquest-Ware interviewed immigration policy and legal experts in several states and conducted extensive research about third-country deportation policies and cases under the second Trump administration.
REFERENCES
Florida Court Records — Hillsborough County Clerk of Court and Comptroller (2010 - 2017)
Letters from Alisa Ramdial Shahib to judge — Hillsborough County Clerk of Court and Comptroller (2010 - 2011)
Third Country Deportation Watch (Refugees International and Human Rights First | 2025-2026)
Third-Country Removals Factsheet (American Immigration Council | December 2025)
At What Cost? Inside the Trump Administration’s Secret Deportation Deals (U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations | February 2026)
Statement on Third-Country Removals (Department of Homeland Security | June 2025)
Deaths and Health Care Issues in ICE Detention Centers Under the Second Trump
Administration (KFF | March 2026)
U.S. Court Records — (United States Courts | 2024-2026)
Statement: Released by ICE, Legal Aid client temporarily avoids deportation — (Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid | May 2026)
D.V.D. v. D.H.S Motion for Clarification — (U.S. Supreme Court | July 2025)
Habeas Explainer Packet — (National Immigration Project — March 2026)
TYPE OF ARTICLE
Enterprise — In-depth examination of a single subject requiring extensive research and resources.
