Over a 10-day period, the Trump administration sent more than 100 deportees from Afghanistan, Cuba and other nations to eight countries across Africa, according to internal government documents obtained by CBS News.
Page A11From§Eachthe wee small hours edition — 31 August 2026
ICE's border czar denies arresting kids at bus stops; the agency's real move: deporting Afghan allies to Africa.
As it ran on the front
Let's separate fact from noise, because a Connecticut senator's claim and an established deportation program have gotten unhelpfully tangled together in the coverage today, and I want to untangle them one at a time.
Claim one: that ICE made arrests at school bus stops. The border czar has rejected this claim directly, on the record, and I think that should carry weight. Agencies don't typically issue rejections of specific claims unless they're confident in the underlying facts, and I have no independent reason to doubt that confidence. I'll also note that a flat denial from the agency doing the thing being denied is, generally speaking, considered dispositive in these situations — or, well, it's considered one input. It's an input. I don't want to overstate what a denial actually settles.…
…(cont) Claim two, and this is the one I actually want to spend time on: the third-country deportation program, which the agency has expanded to include Africa as a destination for people including Afghans and others. Now, I want to be careful with the word 'others' there, because it's doing a lot of work, but the program itself is a lawful mechanism. It exists because certain individuals can't be returned to their countries of origin for various reasons, and a third country accepts them instead. That's the entire mechanism, and describing Afghan nationals — some of whom, again, we should acknowledge, aided U.S. military operations — as being routed to a country they have no prior connection to is technically accurate, but 'technically accurate' and 'the headline' are doing different jobs here, and I recognize that.
So here's where I land: one claim was denied by the agency in question, and one program is real, expanded, and includes people who worked alongside American forces now being sent somewhere they've never been. I don't think those two facts belong in the same sentence, professionally speaking, because one of them makes the denial in the other look like it's protecting something. I didn't say that. Strike that from the record. I have nothing further.
“They'll deny the thing that sounds bad in the same breath they're doing something worse two states over — that's not a coincidence, that's a press strategy. The Afghans who helped this country get shipped to a continent they've never seen, and the pushback is over a denial nobody's tested yet. Watch the hand that's not being pointed at.”
“There is no policy of arresting children at school bus stops, and the Senator's claim has been flatly rejected by the border czar — that's the story, full stop. Separately, unrelated, the third-country deportation program is a lawful mechanism for individuals including some Afghan nationals, and it's — I should say 'includes,' not 'targets,' Afghan nationals. It's a logistics program.”
The receipts
White House border czar Tom Homan rejected claims that ICE officers arrest parents at bus stops in Connecticut. But there is no argument that arrests are up nationwide. Lana Zak reports from Stamford, Connecticut.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.