Deportation sans law: International and domestic legal framework on compensation in cases of wrongful expulsion – Part 4
Fourth part of the five-part series examining the forcible expulsion of Indian citizens to Bangladesh based on unverified suspicions of illegal migration, conducted without due process
South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre
17 February 2026
Expulsion is an act by a public authority to remove a person or persons against his or her will from the territory of that state. A successful expulsion of a person by a country is called a deportation. A country cannot deport its own citizens, as citizens have an absolute right to remain in their native country. On rare occasions, when citizenship was obtained on false grounds, an individual may have their citizenship divested and can be deported. Democratic countries prohibit the exile or deportation of native-born citizens.
Legal limits on deportation of citizens
States may deport individuals who were once recognised as citizens in certain limited situations.
Denaturalisation occurs when a naturalised citizen is found to have obtained citizenship through misrepresentation, including concealing their criminal history; their citizenship may then be revoked, after which they can be deported.
Mistaken deportations, though illegal, have also occurred, with countries deporting their own citizens after wrongfully identifying them as foreign nationals. Such cases often arise due to administrative errors, outdated records, or lack of documentation to prove citizenship status.
In the context of dual citizenship, some countries, such as the United Kingdom, have the power to divest a person of citizenship if they are a dual national and their presence is deemed ‘not conducive to the public good,’ including allegations of terrorist connections. Since the individual retains another nationality and is not rendered stateless, they may subsequently be deported.
Extradition and deportation are distinct legal processes. A country may send its own citizens to another country against their will through extradition if they are wanted for a crime committed abroad, but this is not considered deportation.
There have also been cases of administrative errors, where citizens were wrongfully deported due to misidentification, outdated records, or lack of documentation establishing their legal status.
Finally, in rare circumstances, a citizen may lose their status through expatriating acts performed with the intention of relinquishing citizenship, such as serving in a foreign military that is at war with their home country.
Banishment and political exile
Authoritarian regimes have often exiled dissidents by stripping them of citizenship and subsequently expelling them.
Bahrain and Nicaragua, for instance, have been widely criticised for depriving citizens of their nationality on vague grounds such as “public good.” In 2013, a court ruling in the Dominican Republic retroactively stripped citizenship from approximately 200,000 people of Haitian descent, rendering them vulnerable to deportation. Similarly, Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law denied citizenship to the Rohingya population, facilitating their mass expulsion.
‘Third-country’ transfers
Some governments have adopted policies that transfer individuals wrongly identified as non-citizens to third countries. The United States and Australia, for instance, have implemented measures allowing migrants to be sent to countries with which they have no prior ties, raising significant human rights concerns. Although these policies are formally directed at non-citizens, errors in identification have resulted in citizens being wrongfully caught within such systems.