The U.S. deported 50 people to Ukraine this week, a Ukrainian border official said Tuesday, in what appears to be the largest single deportation from the U.S. to Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion. The flight landed near the Polish border in the early hours of Monday.
Since the invasion began, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has deported 105 Ukrainians in total, with 13 deported in the last quarter of 2024, according to ICE’s publicly available tracker. Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., Olha Stefanishyna, said the Trump administration originally planned to send 80 people on the flight; at least one person on the original list had previously been unable to be claimed as a Ukrainian citizen. It was not immediately clear why only 50 were ultimately deported.
Immigration lawyers have warned that deportees to Ukraine could face conscription; Ukrainian men ages 25 to 60 are eligible for the draft, and some women and younger people have also volunteered to fight. U.S. law allows deportations, including to countries people are not originally from, but domestic and international law bar sending people to places where they face violence, persecution or torture.
The Trump administration has pursued deportation agreements with countries with poor human rights records or active conflicts — including South Sudan, Libya, Eswatini, Rwanda and El Salvador — as it seeks to scale up removals. Lawyers say six of eight men deported to South Sudan over the summer remain there, and media reports have said some people sent to other countries have been imprisoned.
“Currently, border guards have ensured their registration in the border relation for entry into Ukraine in accordance with the rules established by law,” Andrii Demchenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s State Border Service, told NPR. “It is worth noting that Ukraine accepts its citizens in any case.” Ukraine will accept people it recognizes as its citizens, the spokesperson said. Stefanishyna described deportation as “a widely used legal mechanism provided for by the immigration laws of most countries,” saying it is a routine procedure applied to foreign nationals and stateless persons who violate terms of stay in the U.S.
Many of the people on the flight had long ties to the U.S., raising legal and humanitarian concerns. Eric Lee, an immigration lawyer with a client on the plane, said the group included people who have lived in the U.S. since childhood, some with U.S. citizen spouses and children. Some do not speak Ukrainian; others are not Ukrainian citizens, having been born in the Soviet Union before Ukraine existed as a separate country.
One detainee profiled by NPR, Roman Surovtsev, was slated for the flight but was not deported after an immigration court stayed his removal hours before departure and reopened his case. Surovtsev, who lived in Dallas with a U.S. citizen wife and two children, came to the U.S. as a refugee. He lost his green card as a teenager after pleading guilty to a California carjacking. ICE previously tried to deport him to Ukraine but was unable to secure travel documents; at one point deportation papers were in Ukrainian, a language he does not speak.
Surovtsev’s lawyers say they vacated his conviction and moved to reinstate his green card, but he has remained in detention. U.S. District Judge Ada Brown initially blocked his removal through Jan. 13, then reversed that decision days later, surprising his attorneys. Lee said Surovtsev “has also not been given the opportunity to express his fear of being deported to an active war zone.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Surovtsev “received full due process and was ordered removed by an immigration judge on November 4, 2014 — over a decade ago,” and added, “Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, if you break the law, you will face the consequences. Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.”
