Democrat House Leader Hakeem Jeffries nodded repeatedly and signaled that a Democrat-controlled Congress would reverse the Trump administration’s third-country deportations when asked about it at a Florida campaign event with congressional candidate Eliott Rodriguez.

The exchange took place earlier this month at a press conference at CAO Bakery & Cafe in Pinecrest, where Jeffries campaigned for Rodriguez in Florida’s 27th Congressional District.

A reporter asked whether “a new Congress under your new leadership will bring back people who have been deported to third countries like Africa” and referenced families seeking the return of relatives.

Jeffries responded by thanking the reporter, stating that “we need dramatic change in terms of the extreme immigration enforcement policies that have been inhumanely unleashed on the American people and hardworking immigrant families,” and emphasizing that House Democrats have “continue[d] to make clear that Donald Trump’s violent mass deportation machine does not get a dime.”

He added that “there’s a lot of repair work that is going to have to be done to correct the injustices that have been inflicted on the American people and on law-abiding immigrant families and we’ll prepare to do that work.”

Jeffries also said that immigration enforcement “should be fair, it should be just, it should be humane” and consistent with the country’s identity as “a nation of hard-working immigrants.”

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Rodriguez, a former CBS Miami anchor and son of Cuban immigrants, has focused his campaign on affordability and painting immigration enforcement as “cruel and inhumane.”

Third-country deportations send individuals to nations where they have no citizenship or ties if their home country will not take them, a practice the Trump administration has expanded through agreements with more than two dozen countries, including several in Africa, such as Liberia, Rwanda, Equatorial Guinea, and the Central African Republic.

Reporting and data tracked by groups like the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants indicate roughly 22,000 to 25,000 people have been removed this way since early 2025.

Court challenges have contested the due-process protections afforded before such transfers, and the administration has appealed rulings against them to the Supreme Court.

Earlier this year, Jeffries declined to rule out a vote to abolish ICE if Democrats regain the House.

Jeffries has also demanded explicit prohibitions on detaining or deporting U.S. citizens as a condition of supporting Department of Homeland Security funding and has highlighted cases such as the temporary removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.

The post WATCH: Democrat House Leader Hakeem Jeffries Nods Yes When Asked If Democrats Would Bring Back Illegal Aliens Deported to Africa appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.