OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
11:55 AM – Monday, October 6, 2025
The United States deported 10 more illegal aliens to Eswatini on Monday — the second transfer this year under a third-country deportation agreement with the southern African kingdom.
Eswatini officials confirmed that the group arrived in the capital, Mbabane, early on Monday morning.
The deportees are being held in a “secured facility” while arrangements are made for their repatriation to their countries of origin, according to Eswatini’s Ministry of Home Affairs.
The transfer is part of a broader agreement signed earlier this year allowing the U.S. to send up to 160 deportees to Eswatini. In exchange, the U.S. reportedly agreed to pay the kingdom over $5 million in logistical and administrative support.
This latest flight follows a July deportation in which five men from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba, and Yemen were sent to Eswatini under the same program. Those individuals remain in detention.
Under the Trump administration, the U.S. has revived and expanded the use of “third-country deportations”—a legal mechanism that allows deporting individuals to a country other than their own when returning them home is deemed impracticable or impossible. Officials have described the approach as a way to enforce immigration laws efficiently when countries of origin refuse to accept their nationals.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin stated that the deportees taken to Eswatini were “so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.”
Progressive critics, however, argue that the policy undermines international human rights standards.
“This is effectively a human trade agreement,” said Maria Santos, a legal analyst with the Global Refugee Advocacy Network. “People are being sent to a country they’ve never seen, under an opaque deal that strips them of due process and basic dignity.”
This year, a federal judge had temporarily blocked third-country deportations, ruling that illegal aliens must be given a chance to contest removals that could expose them to harm. However, the Supreme Court later lifted that injunction in June — allowing deportations to resume while litigation continues.
The U.S.–Eswatini deal is the first of its kind in Africa and could set a precedent for similar arrangements with other small nations. Analysts say Eswatini, one of the world’s last absolute monarchies, may view the agreement as a means to strengthen ties with Washington, D.C.
As of Monday evening, both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Eswatini’s government declined to release the names or detailed nationalities of the latest deportees.
“One man, from Jamaica, has already been repatriated with the cooperation of his government … Two others are expected to be repatriated soon, the statement from Eswatini said,” as reported by CNN.
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