Eswatini in Africa receives 2 more US deportees from Latin America under a controversial third-country deal

The United States has sent another group of migrants to Eswatini in southern Africa even though the migrants are not from Eswatini, continuing the Trump administration’s controversial practice of “third-country deportations.”

This latest group consists of two migrants from Latin America. Eswatini did not identify them, give their exact nationalities, or say how long they will remain there. They represent the fifth group sent from the U.S. to Eswatini since July 2025.

The broader policy involves agreements under which countries agree to accept deportees who are citizens of entirely different nations. According to advocates cited by AP, the Trump administration has now deported thousands of people to roughly two dozen third countries, including about 11 African nations such as Rwanda, Ghana, Uganda, Cameroon, Congo and Sierra Leone.

The administration argues that these arrangements help it carry out deportations when returning people directly to their countries of origin is difficult or impossible. Critics, however, contend that the system can function as a legal workaround that ultimately enables asylum seekers to be returned to countries they originally fled, raising serious due-process and human-rights concerns.

The choice of receiving countries has also generated criticism. Some governments participating in the program — including Eswatini, South Sudan and Equatorial Guinea — have poor human-rights records or authoritarian governments. Eswatini’s King Mswati III, for example, has been accused of violently suppressing pro-democracy movements.

Some migrants previously sent to Eswatini have eventually been returned home. A Jamaican man was repatriated, while a Cambodian deportee spent five months in a maximum-security prison before being released for repatriation.

The program is expanding elsewhere as well. Liberia has agreed to accept as many as 1,200 third-country deportees, one of the largest commitments so far.

The central controversy: the U.S. is increasingly deporting migrants not to their home countries, but to foreign nations willing to accept them, sometimes through agreements whose terms are secret. Supporters see it as another tool for enforcing immigration law; opponents argue that it raises major questions about asylum protections, due process and the treatment of migrants once they leave U.S. custody.