The United States has sent five men to the small African nation of Eswatini in an expansion of the Trump administration’s third-country deportation program, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday.
The U.S. has already deported eight men to another African nation, South Sudan, after the Supreme Court lifted restrictions on sending people to countries where they have no ties.
In a late-night post on X, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the men, who are citizens of Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen and Laos, had arrived in Eswatini on a plane. She said they were all convicted criminals and “individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.”
There was no immediate comment from Eswatini authorities over any deal to accept third-country deportees or what would happen to them in that country.
The Trump administration has said it is seeking more deals with African nations to take deportees from the U.S. Some have pushed back, with Nigeria saying it is rejecting pressure from the U.S. to take deportees who are citizens of other countries.
The U.S. has also sent hundreds of Venezuelans and others to Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama.
Eswatini is a country of about 1.2 million people that sits between South Africa and Mozambique. It is one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies — and the last in Africa — and King Mswati III has ruled by decree since 1986. The country was previously called Swaziland.
Political parties are effectively banned and pro-democracy groups have said for years that Mswati III has crushed any political dissent, sometimes violently.