The government of Eswatini announced on Thursday it received four more “third country” deportees from the United States, as part of the Trump administration’s multimillion-dollar deal with the small African nation.
Now a total of 19 deportees from the US have been sent to Eswatini even as they hail from other countries, amid the Trump administration’s continued anti-immigrant crackdown and changes to immigration policy.
A system for monitoring people moved around by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), in the form of a flight tracker, run by the advocacy group Human Rights First, tracked the deportation flight to Eswatini. The flight apparently took off from Phoenix, Arizona, and landed in Eswatini in southern Africa at around 11pm ET on Wednesday night, according to the ICE flight monitor.
In a statement to the Guardian, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not provide details requested about the people deported to Eswatini. “The Trump administration is utilizing all lawful options to carry out the largest deportation operation in history, just as President Trump promised,” said the statement, attributed to a senior DHS official.
Two of the deportees sent to Eswatini on Wednesday night were from Somalia, one was from Sudan and one was from Tanzania, the government said. No identities or other details about them were disclosed by the authorities.
In the past year, the Trump administration has struck “third country” deals with numerous countries around the globe. The deals allow countries, often after payment from the US, to accept deported immigrants who are not their citizens.
A recent congressional investigation found that the Trump administration paid more than $32m to five foreign governments to accept a number of deportees.
“The administration is conducting questionable deals by making direct payments primarily to corrupt and unstable foreign governments with track records of public corruption, human rights abuses and human trafficking,” the investigation, carried out by Democrats on the Senate foreign relations committee, reads.
Previous deportees to Eswatini, who arrived in July and October of last year, included nationals of Vietnam, Cuba, Laos and Yemen. A lawyer for some of the members of that earlier group, Alma David, told Reuters that a Cambodian man, Pheap Rom, was due to be repatriated to his country of origin. Rom would be the second person to be released from Eswatini custody after another man was sent back to Jamaica last year.
The Trump administration paid the small southern African country $5.1m to receive the deportees.
“In line with this agreement,” the Eswatini government said in a statement, “the nation has received another cohort of four third-country nationals from the United States.”
Eswatini is one of several African countries involved in third-country deportation deals with the US. Three men sent there last July filed a claim against Eswatini’s government with the African Union’s human rights body. They said their continued detention was an unlawful violation of their rights, the Guardian reported. The Eswatini high court last month threw out a case filed by local human rights lawyers that challenged it, though an appeal has been lodged.
Despite having served their sentences for crimes on US soil, the remainder of the third-country deportees sent to Eswatini last year were still in prison.
