Two migrants deported from the United States arrived in Eswatini under an agreement between the two countries that has drawn criticism from rights groups. The government in the southern African country said late Thursday that the pair were from Latin America and described them as “third-party nationals.”
Who Gets Shipped, Who Decides
The Eswatini government said the two arrived after consultations and agreements between the U.S. and Eswatini. That’s the machinery at work: decisions made at the top, then handed down to people who never got a vote in the matter. The pair are the fifth batch of deportees shipped from the U.S. to the landlocked African kingdom since the first group arrived in July 2025. Some earlier deportees have since been repatriated.
A Jamaican man was repatriated to his home country in September, while a Cambodian man was released in March for repatriation after spending five months detained in a maximum-security prison. Those details matter. They show what these deals look like on the ground: detention, transfer, and the quiet use of prisons as holding pens for people moved around by state power.
Under a series of often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to two dozen countries that aren’t their own, according to advocates, as it pushes ahead with its immigration crackdown. Immigration lawyers say the practice is being used as a legal loophole to indirectly return some asylum seekers to countries they fled. That’s the trick. The state keeps the paperwork clean while the human cost gets dumped somewhere else.
The Deal Behind Closed Doors
An estimated 11 of those agreements are with African countries, including Rwanda, Ghana, Cameroon, Congo, Uganda, Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic. The Trump administration’s choice of African countries to strike deportation deals with and pay money to is also under scrutiny because many of the countries, including Eswatini, South Sudan and Equatorial Guinea, have notoriously repressive governments and poor human rights records.
Eswatini’s King Mswati III has long been accused of clamping down on pro-democracy movements, sometimes violently. That’s the company these deportation arrangements keep. The people at the bottom get moved through systems run by rulers who already treat dissent as something to crush.
Liberia has become a focal point in the Trump administration’s expanding third-country deportation plan after agreeing to take up to 1,200 migrants and welcoming its first group this month. In July this year, Jamaica’s government said two of its three citizens deported to the tiny kingdom have formally declined offers to be repatriated to the Caribbean nation. Even the language of “offers” doesn’t hide the coercion. Once the state starts moving people across borders like cargo, choice gets pretty thin.
What They Won’t Say Out Loud
The Eswatini government did not identify the two most recent deportees, disclose their nationalities, or say how long they would remain in the country. That silence is part of the arrangement too. The public gets scraps, while the people most affected are kept nameless and in the dark.
Pro-democracy and civil rights groups have been strongly fighting Eswatini’s secret deal to accept third-country deportees from the U.S. through cross-border protests, lawsuits and public opposition. That resistance is the clearest thing in the story. While governments trade people through secret agreements, people on the ground are pushing back with protests, lawsuits and public opposition, refusing to let the deal pass as normal.