CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — The United States has dispatched five individuals to the small African nation of Eswatini as part of an expansion of the Trump administration’s third-country deportation initiative, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced on Tuesday.
The U.S. has previously deported eight individuals to South Sudan, a different African country, following the Supreme Court’s removal of limitations on sending people to nations with which they have no connections.
In a post late at night on X, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated that these men, who are nationals from Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen, and Laos, had landed in Eswatini via aircraft. She noted that they were all convicted criminals described as “individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.”
There was no immediate comment from Eswatini authorities over any deal to accept third-country deportees or what would happen to them in that country.
The Trump administration has said it is seeking more deals with African nations to take deportees from the U.S. Some have pushed back, with Nigeria saying it is rejecting pressure from the U.S. to take deportees who are citizens of other countries.
The U.S. has also sent hundreds of Venezuelans and others to Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama.
Eswatini is a country of about 1.2 million people that sits between South Africa and Mozambique. It is one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies — and the last in Africa — and King Mswati III has ruled by decree since 1986. The country was previously called Swaziland.
Political parties are effectively banned and pro-democracy groups have said for years that Mswati III has crushed any political dissent, sometimes violently.
