The Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) has voiced concerns that children could be caught up in the US’s deportation of third country nationals here.

It said that concerns about what it called a “repulsive” programme have been heightened by the failure of the Guyana Government to publish the agreement with the US for the relocation of third country nationals here.

In a statement this week, it said that a new wave of international concern has arisen over  children being detained and deported separately from parents and guardians. Some 200,000 children, 70% of them below the age of 14 years, are estimated to have been removed by immigration judges. By August 2026 an average of just less than 15,000 minors per month were being put out of the country.

GHRA said that its concern is how much effort had been made by the government hereto ensure that Guyana’s recently announced Agreement to cooperate with this programme has or could impact on the children of deportees brought to this country.  Resistance to publishing the Agreement from both countries suggests there is something to conceal, GHRA contended.

It charged that the deportation programme makes no bones about its aim being to rid the United States of people of colour or mixed race. It said that it is directed energetically from the White House by Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller.  GHRA said that he is reported as pressuring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to arrest 3,000 people per day.

“US laws designed originally to protect children are being cynically amended to accelerate their removal. Children sent to relatives in the US to safeguard them from rampant violence, prostitution and exploitation in their native countries are being returned to these dangers. The deportee programme hardly takes such issues into account, since the US programme’s sole interest lies in expelling them from the US”, the GHRA said. 

A particularly reprehensible aspect of the deportation of children relates to arresting and detaining prospective sponsors willing to take detained immigrant children. The human rights group said that newspaper reports allege that potential sponsors are being detained just before or shortly after a child is set to be released from federal custody, enabling deportation  of children as quickly as possible.  

The GHRA said that five Federal Agencies jointly responsible for the child deportation programme portray  this behaviour as being in the ‘best interest of the child’. 

“These institutions have been joined in their disgusting mission by a State Department turned inside out from being a source of protection to promoter of abuse”, the human rights group charged. 

GHRA called again for the  government to publish the Agreement  for Guyanese people to assess the extent to which this country  has aligned itself with a programme condemned by official and civic bodies around the world. 

“The posture of the current ruling party in Guyana towards the extremist US deportation policy is especially perplexing in light of its own experience with US immigration. Migration to the US provided numerous of its adherents with an escape route from the extreme policies of the then ruling party in the ‘80s and ‘90s’. “Probably most Guyanese families can name members provided with a new lease of life by immigration to the United States”, the GHRA added. 

President Irfaan Ali has defended the arrangement, saying Guyana has complete discretion over whom it accepts. He said the US must provide criminal-history and medical information before Guyana conducts its own checks, and only persons formally approved by the government may be transferred. “People just can’t arrive on a plane,” he said. Ali insisted that “nothing is hidden”, but did not commit to publishing the signed instrument when asked. 

US Ambassador Nicole Theriot has said Washington plans to send one flight a month, although the number of arrivals depends on Guyana’s approval of the proposed passengers. She said Guyana had already rejected some names.