Phone Chomsavanh walked out of a maximum-security prison in Eswatini on Sunday. He’d spent more than a year inside. He’d already served his sentence in the United States, and no one in Eswatini had ever accused him of a crime.
Chomsavanh, a Laotian citizen, has been released and is now on his way to Laos, said Tin Thanh Nguyen, his U.S.-based lawyer. In separate messages, Nguyen said his client left Eswatini and landed in Johannesburg en route to Laos. An Eswatini government spokesperson didn’t immediately acknowledge the release.
A Journey Without Notice
Chomsavanh was one of five immigrants sent to Eswatini in July 2025, during the early days of the Trump administration’s third-country deportation program. He had no ties to Eswatini. Nguyen said Chomsavanh learned only shortly before a military cargo plane landed there, more than 14 months ago, that the plane would take him and other deportees to the country.
All five men had convictions for serious crimes in the United States, but they’d served their sentences before officials sent them to Matsapha Correctional Complex, near the administrative capital, Mbabane. Nguyen put it bluntly: “He had already served his time. Instead they put him on a plane without telling him where it was headed and left him in a prison in a country he had never heard of, where nobody ever accused him of anything,” he said. “He sat there for more than a year. No notice, no hearing, no chance to object. That is not due process by any definition.”
Chomsavanh’s life story adds to the picture. Nguyen said he was born in a refugee camp in Thailand after his parents fled Laos, and his family moved to the United States when he was 7.
A Program Built on Payments and Secrecy
Human Rights First and Refugees International, groups that monitor the deportations, say around 500 immigrants have gone from the United States to African countries that aren’t their home nations since the third-country program began last year. Around a dozen African countries have accepted deportees, with some receiving millions of dollars in payments.
The Trump administration paid Eswatini, Africa’s last absolute monarchy, ruled by a king, $5.1 million under its agreement with Washington. The country has received around 30 deportees.
The program sends people to countries where they have no ties and where they haven’t been charged with any crime. Rights groups and lawyers have sharply criticized the policy, and challengers have brought legal cases in the United States and some recipient countries. The Trump administration has defended it as a way to quickly remove immigrants with final deportation orders when their home countries might not immediately take them back.
Much of the program has taken place out of public view. Officials have largely carried it out in secrecy, offering little transparency about how many people they’ve deported, where they’re held or the conditions of their detention.
The Courts Weigh In
The legal fight is far from settled. Last month, a U.S. appeals court upheld a judge’s ruling that halted the program because it didn’t give immigrants facing removal time to challenge deportation to a third country if they feared persecution or torture there. Then, last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the administration could temporarily continue swiftly removing immigrants to third countries. The justices are scheduled to hear arguments in the case in December.
The policy that held Chomsavanh for more than a year can therefore keep operating while the nation’s highest court considers whether it gives people a fair chance to object.
Why This Matters:
Chomsavanh’s case shows what happens when removal moves faster than the safeguards meant to govern it. According to his lawyer, a man who had completed his sentence spent more than a year in a maximum-security prison abroad with no notice, no hearing and no charge. Roughly 500 people have gone to African countries that aren’t their own, and the program’s secrecy makes it hard for courts, Congress or the public to check how officials run it. Payments like the $5.1 million sent to Eswatini raise questions about who benefits when human beings become part of a transaction between governments. With the Supreme Court allowing removals to continue until arguments in December, the due process questions Nguyen raised remain open for others still being sent abroad.