The draft memorandum of understanding between Washington and Kingston deserves far more scrutiny than it has received. Reports indicate that the Holness administration has engaged in — indeed, may have initiated — talks to accept up to 10,000 non-Jamaican foreign nationals deported from the United States under a Third-Country National framework. In plain terms, Jamaica is being positioned as a subcontracted holding zone for America’s deportation apparatus.

The agreement’s so-called guard rails — a cap of 25 arrivals per fortnight, a “circuit breaker” clause, and exclusions for minors and violent offenders — are largely cosmetic. More revealing is the absence of any direct financial commitment, even as it anticipates US foreign assistance being routed through an international organisation to manage deportees on Jamaican soil. We have seen this model before — from Trump-era asylum agreements in Central America to Britain’s ill-fated Rwanda scheme — where wealthy nations effectively externalise their border problems by purchasing the compliance of smaller states.

What makes this arrangement particularly troubling is the hypocrisy it exposes. For years, Jamaica has turned away desperate Haitian maritime arrivals, citing limited capacity as a small island developing state. Individualised refugee assessments, legal counsel and due process were deemed unaffordable. Yet when Washington calls, that incapacity appears to vanish. The unavoidable conclusion is that past refusals were never solely about resources, but also about incentives.