WASHINGTON DC – The White House on Friday dismissed recent reports alleging that the Donald Trump administration had asked Kyiv early this year to take in third-country nationals deported by the US, all while Ukraine was fending off Russia’s attacks.
“I’ve never heard that before,” Stephen Miller, President Trump’s deputy chief of staff and top policy and homeland security adviser, told Kyiv Post’s Washington correspondent.
Earlier this week, The Washington Post, citing official documents, reported that the Trump administration sent a request to Kyiv back in January, shortly after Trump took office, asking it to take in illegal migrants who had arrived in the US from third countries. However, sources in Ukrainian government circles told the paper that no such formal request ever reached Kyiv.
“The Ukrainians are correct: no such a request could possibly reach them from Washington because there has never been one,” another senior Trump administration official familiar with the topic, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about the inter-government communications, told Kyiv Post Friday afternoon.
The official went on to add that while the Trump team has indeed “tested the waters” with several foreign governments to see if they would accept US deportees who are not their citizens, Ukraine, however, “was never one of them – not even in the shortlist [of targeted countries].”
President Donald Trump in March seized upon a 1798 law, known as the Alien Enemies Act, to send over 200 Venezuelan men that his team asserted were members of a gang known as Tren de Aragua to a prison in El Salvador.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed on April 30 that the US was intending to expand its use of foreign prisons as part of a mass deportation program and “not just El Salvador,” as he put it speaking during a Cabinet meeting.
“We are working with other countries to say, ‘We want to send you some of the most despicable human beings to your countries.’” Rubio added: “The further away from America, the better.”
While Rubio did not specify which countries the government would consider, he went on to add that “the further away from America, the better.”
Several other countries, including Costa Rica and Panama, have already agreed to accept third-country nationals deported from the US.