THE government of the tiny, landlocked African country of Eswatini has confirmed that it received five individuals deported from the United States under President Donald Trump.
In a statement on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the Eswatini government said the deportations were “the result of months of robust high-level engagements”.
“The five prisoners are in the country and are housed in Correctional facilities within isolated units, ‘where similar offenders are kept’,” spokesperson Thabile Mdluli wrote.
But she appeared to concede there were human rights concerns about accepting deported individuals whose countries of origin were not Eswatini.
“As a responsible member of the global community, the Kingdom of Eswatini adheres to international agreements and diplomatic protocols regarding the repatriation of individuals, ensuring that due process and respect for human rights is followed,” Mdluli said.
Her statement also indicated that Eswatini would work with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) “to facilitate the transit of the inmates to their countries of origin”.
The deportations are part of a wider trend under the Trump administration of deporting foreign nationals to countries outside of their own.
The White House has argued that these third-country deportations are necessary for individuals whose home countries will not accept them. But critics have maintained that the Trump administration is relying on countries with documented histories of human rights abuses to accept deportees, thereby subjecting them to the risk of inhumane treatment.
There is also concern that deportations under Trump are happening so swiftly that those facing deportation are unable to challenge their removal in court, violating their rights to due process.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson from the US Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, revealed the recent deportations to Eswatini, identifying the affected individuals as citizens of Laos, Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba and Yemen.
“A safe third country deportation flight to Eswatini in Southern Africa has landed,” McLaughlin wrote on social media. “This flight took individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.”
She asserted that the deportees had been convicted of crimes like murder, child rape and assault, calling them “depraved monsters” who had “been terrorizing American communities”.
The Trump administration has likened immigration into the US to an “invasion”, and Trump himself has repeatedly tied undocumented people to criminality, though studies indicate they commit fewer crimes than US-born citizens.
