WASHINGTON — The tiny Pacific nation of Palau — a former filming location for “Survivor” — has agreed to take up to 75 third-country deportees from the United States who don’t have a criminal record — in exchange for a $7.5 million grant to support the roughly 18,000-person island chain.
The $100,000 per-deportee fee, announced on Christmas Eve by Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr. and the US embassy in Koror, introduces one of the most favorable venues yet for deportees if their recalcitrant homelands — such as China, Cuba, Russia or Iran — won’t take them.
“Palau and the United States signed a Memorandum of Understanding allowing up to 75 third country nationals, who have never been charged with a crime, to live and work in Palau, helping address local labor shortages in needed occupations,” the country’s president said in a statement.
“In connection with this arrangement, the United States granted $7.5 million to help Palau meet related public service and infrastructure needs, while both countries continue close cooperation on immigration and security matters.”
The US embassy said, “The United States deeply appreciates Palau’s cooperation in enforcing U.S. immigration laws, which remains a top priority for the Trump Administration.”
In addition to the new $7.5 million grant, the Trump administration agreed to provide $6 million “to prevent collapse of [Palau’s] civil service pension plan system” and $2 million for “new law enforcement initiatives.”
Palau, whose main industries include tourism and fishing, already was due $889 million in US aid over 20 years — or $44.45 million per year — under an agreement brokered by the Biden administration that took effect last year.
Those funds were intended to bankroll the country’s “education, health, environment, administration of justice, public safety, and audits.”
Palau, located east of the Philippines and a two-hour flight from Guam, was formerly governed by the United States, which conquered the islands from Japan after the bloody battle of Peleliu in 1944, which claimed 1,544 American lives as Japanese troops fought to the death from mountain hideouts.
In the late 1970s, then-President Jimmy Carter spearheaded the process to grant Palau — along with nearby Micronesia and the Marshall Islands — independence from the United States. Carter similarly returned the Panama Canal Zone, controlled by the US since 1903, to the nation of Panama.
Thus far, Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands have escaped President Trump’s expansionist ambitions, which include reclaiming the Panama Canal and annexing Greenland.
In 2005, the sparsely populated republic gained pop-culture relevance as the location of the 10th season of “Survivor,” which was won by New York City firefighter Tom Westman.
Palau is heavily dependent on foreign aid — accounting for 12% of its GDP — and also has garnered support from Taiwan and Japan, which controlled Palau following World War I when most German-colonized Pacific islands were regrouped as a United Nations trusteeship.
The country recognizes Oct. 1, 1994, as its independence day, when its compact of free association agreement with the US took effect.
Although it is a member of the United Nations, Palau uses the US dollar and its citizens are entitled to freely travel, work and receive federal benefits inside the United States.
The US Postal Service delivers mail, the US military is in charge of defense and English is a co-official language.
Many other cash-strapped countries are taking non-citizens in support of Trump’s mass-deportation initiative, which also has induced illegal immigrants to self-deport for between $1,000 and $3,000 and a free one-way ticket to cut down on the average cost of $17,121 to arrest, detain and deport them.
The Trump administration recently agreed to pay Equatorial Guinea, the oil-rich yet poverty-stricken African kleptocracy, $7.5 million to take an unknown number of deportees.
El Salvador in March placed 238 deported alleged gang members in a high-security prison for $6 million — or $25,000 apiece — and seven were dropped off in war-torn South Sudan in July, including perps from Burma, Cuba, Laos, Mexico and Vietnam.
Rwanda received $100,000 to take a single Iraqi man, with Kigali agreeing in August to take another 250.
The Trump administration previously inked deals with Uganda and Honduras to take in third-country immigrants without criminal convictions — with those deals specifying Uganda would accept fellow Africans and Honduras would take 200 Spanish speakers from elsewhere.
