Eswatini

On July 15, 2025, the United States deported to Eswatini five men from Vietnam, Yemen, Cuba, Jamaica, and Laos. On October 6, 2025, the United States deported another ten men from countries including Cambodia, Chad, Cuba, Ethiopia, Haiti, the Philippines, and Vietnam. On March 11, 2026, four additional men from Somalia, Tanzania and Sudan were deported to Eswatini. At least three of the men who were forcibly transferred on these flights—including a man from Chad—had been granted humanitarian protection by U.S. immigration judges that prohibited them from being sent to their countries.

The Eswatini government has detained the men at the Matsapha Correctional Complex, a maximum-security prison, without charges, due process, or meaningful access to counsel. The men have been prohibited from meeting in person with local attorneys in Eswatini and lack confidential telephone access to counsel in the United States. Four of the men were prevented from meeting with a local attorney for nine months while the Eswatini government fought in court to continue to deny them legal access. 

The Eswatini government estimated that the first group of five men would be imprisoned for about 12 months, adding: “It could be slightly less or slightly more” and that Eswatini “would work with international organisations to deport them to their home countries.” After the second group was transferred, the Eswatini government announced that the men were being detained until their repatriation, and again reiterated after the third group’s transfer that the agreement’s purpose was “facilitating their eventual repatriation” to their home countries. These statements underscore how the forced transfers place some of the men at risk of chain refoulement (onward return to persecution or torture), in addition to subjecting them all to indefinite and arbitary imprisonment. 

All but two of the 19 men remain arbitrarily detained. The indefinite nature of their detention has taken a serious mental toll on many of the men. In October 2025, a Cuban man who was on the July flight went on a hunger strike for a month—until he started showing signs of organ failure—to protest the conditions of his detention, including his ongoing confinement and lack of access to legal counsel. Terrified of being imprisoned in Eswatini forever, another man repeatedly told his attorney that the prison there never lets people go. One man told his attorney that he feels like a caged animal with no end in sight. The prison does not have air conditioning, making the hot, humid summer months especially uncomfortable for the men. Food is insufficient, medication is scarce, and requests often go unmet or are belatedly met. 

The U.S. government claimed that the removal of the first group of men to Eswatini was necessary because the home countries of the men refused to accept their returns, a claim disavowed by the government of Jamaica, which subsequently helped arrange the repatriation of Orville Etoria, a Jamaican citizen. Etoria had lived in the United States for nearly five decades—since he arrived in the country at age 12 in 1976—before he was forcibly sent to Eswatini and imprisoned there for two months. 

The men on the first flight were not informed that they were being deported to Eswatini until the plane was preparing to land. All five men on board refused to sign the third-country removal notices to Eswatini that were given to them at that time. Men on the second flight were only given about an hour’s notice before being removed. One of the men told ICE that he was afraid of being deported to Eswatini, but the officers ignored him. 

The forced transfers to Eswatini are part of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) broader practice of deporting individuals with final orders of removal to third countries, including those granted withholding of removal or protection under the Convention Against Torture. In these cases, DHS sends people to third countries that were never identified as potential destinations during their immigration proceedings. These removals take place without prior notice or an opportunity for the individuals to present a fear claim specific to the third country. This practice denies them due process and creates the risk that they will be sent to persecution and torture. It violates the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, Constitutional due process protections, and international treaty obligations codified in U.S. law including the prohibition on refoulement. This practice was challenged before a U.S. federal district court in Massachusetts in D.V.D. v. DHS, leading the court to enjoin third country removals of people with final orders without notice or opportunity to raise a fear claim, but the Supreme Court stayed the injunction in June 2025 pending a decision on the merits. With the stay in place, DHS deported the first two groups to Eswatini without due process or an opportunity to claim fear. On February 25, 2026, the same federal district court declared unlawful and set aside DHS’s third-country removal policy, holding that DHS cannot deport individuals with final removal orders to countries not designated in their removal proceedings without providing meaningful notice and a genuine opportunity to seek protection from persecution or torture. The court rejected DHS’s position that it could transfer people to “so-called ‘third countries’” so long as it lacked specific prior knowledge that harm awaited them, explaining pointedly: “It is not fine, nor is it legal.” The Trump administration has appealed and the decision is stayed while litigation in the case continues. The Trump administration subsequently transferred the third group to Eswatini in March. 

The deportations of third country nationals to Eswatini occur against a backdrop of deteriorating human rights conditions within Eswatini, an absolute monarchy. Since the pro-democracy protests of 2021, security forces have carried out violent crackdowns. Detention facilities, including Mataspha, have been reported for abusive conditions. Estwatini has an “entrenched culture of impunity for human rights violations,” which deteriorated further in 2024 with arbitrary arrests and imprisonment.

The deportations took place under a U.S.-Eswatini Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that was finalized in May 2025, after what officials described as “months of negotiations.” Prior to the agreement, the Trump administration curtailed foreign aid to Eswatini and threatened tariffs, leaving Eswatini’s key trade privileges vulnerable. In April 2025, the United States imposed a 10 percent tariff on Eswatini’s exports, prompting warnings from the country’s central bank of potentially severe economic fallout. 

The text of the MOU was publicly disclosed in a news article in early October 2025. No information was included in the MOU about which nationalities Eswatini agreed to accept. The agreement mentions that Eswatini is party to 1951 Convention, 1967 Protocol and Convention Against Torture and the United States is bound to the 1967 Protocol and CAT and reaffirming their obligations to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms in accordance with their international obligations. Per the MOU, the governments planned to engage with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to assist with onward relocation of those transferred to Estwatini within a year of arrival. In Eswatini, IOM has provided humanitarian assistance to the people who were transferred, including clothing, blankets, and psychosocial support, and has engaged with the government of Eswatini concerning the individuals. In addition, IOM has screened those who opt in and are eligible for its Assisted Voluntary Return program and, to date, has facilitated voluntary return of the Jamaican national to Jamaica. 

The MOU indicates that the United States agreed to provide $5.1 million in funding to support Eswatini’s border and migration management capacity. This funding would cover the costs of accommodating up to 160 individuals transferred by the United States to Estwatini. Accounting for the money has been difficult. Recent reporting indicates that the funding was deposited into the account of the National Disaster Management Agency rather than channeled through the Ministry of Economic Planning, as required under public finance rules governing foreign assistance. When NDMA Chief Executive Officer Vusi Mahlalela was asked to account for the funds, he is said to have told lawmakers that the money had been used on the instruction of the Prime Minister, who established a task team to manage it outside ministerial oversight.

Human rights lawyers and activists in Eswatini filed suit against the Eswatini government, arguing that the secretive agreement with the United States to accept third country nationals is unconstitutional because it was never submitted to parliament for approval and the terms were not publicly disclosed. Court proceedings stalled when, on September 25, 2025, the judge assigned to hear the case inexplicably failed to appear. In early February 2026, judges dismissed the case claiming applicants had no direct interest in the matter and had failed to produce a copy of the agreement. The litigation team has since appealed. On October 3, 2025 a court decision in a separate suit granted four detained individuals access to a local attorney but was stayed after the government of Eswatini appealed. Eswatini’s Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s decision in April 2026, requiring the government to grant access to the attorney. 

The treatment of the transferred people in Eswatini is also receiving scrutiny at the regional level. On December 2, 2025 a group of human rights organizations and lawyers filed a complaint before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) against the Kingdom of Eswatini, challenging its unlawful and prolonged detention of three of the men transferred to Eswatini from the United States. On March 3, 2026, the African Commission responded that it would be taking up the matter and allowing the complaint to proceed.