Phone Chomsavanh, a Laotian citizen the United States sent to Eswatini despite his lack of ties there, left a maximum-security prison on Sunday and was being deported to Laos, his lawyer said. Tin Thanh Nguyen said Chomsavanh had departed Eswatini and landed in Johannesburg, on his way to Laos. An Eswatini government spokesperson didn't immediately confirm his release.
A removal to a country with no ties
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. Nguyen said Chomsavanh found out shortly before arriving that Eswatini was his destination. A military cargo plane took him and the other deportees there more than a year ago.
Chomsavanh and the four other immigrants had convictions for serious crimes in the United States. They had served their sentences before officials sent them to Matsapha Correctional Complex, near Eswatini's administrative capital, Mbabane. Nguyen said Chomsavanh spent more than a year in the prison.
“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,” Nguyen 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.”
Nguyen said Chomsavanh was born in a refugee camp in Thailand after his parents fled Laos. His family moved to the United States when he was 7. The program sent him to Eswatini, where he had no ties and hadn't been charged with a crime.
Payments, oversight and legal challenges
Eswatini, Africa's last absolute monarchy, is ruled by a king and received $5.1 million from the Trump administration under its agreement with the United States. The country has taken in around 30 deportees. Around a dozen African countries have accepted people deported from the United States, and some have received millions of dollars in payments.
Human Rights First and Refugees International, advocacy groups that monitor deportations, say around 500 immigrants have been sent to African countries that aren't their home nations since the third-country program began last year. Officials have carried out the program largely in secrecy. Little information is available about how many people have been deported, where they're held or the conditions of detention.
Rights groups and lawyers have sharply criticized the policy. Lawyers have brought legal challenges in the United States and in some countries receiving deportees. The Trump administration says the program lets it quickly remove immigrants with final deportation orders when their home countries might not take them back right away.
Last month, a U.S. appeals court upheld a judge's ruling that halted the program. The ruling said officials hadn't given immigrants facing removal time to challenge deportation to a third country if they feared persecution or torture there. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that the administration could temporarily continue swift removals to third countries. It is scheduled to hear arguments in the case in December.