Migrants deported by the US to Eswatini being held in solitary confinement

Five migrants deported by the US to the small southern African country of Eswatini, under the Trump administration’s third-country program, will be held in solitary confinement for an undetermined time, an Eswatini government spokesperson says.

Thabile Mdluli, the spokesperson, declined to identify the correctional facility or facilities where the five men are held, citing security concerns. She told the Associated Press that Eswatini planned to ultimately repatriate the five to their home countries with the help of a UN agency.

Mdluli said it wasn’t clear how long that would take.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) – the UN agency tasked with ensuring migration is managed in a way that respects human rights – said on Thursday it was not involved in the removal of the migrants from the US and has not been contacted to help send them back home.

“As always, IOM stands ready to support Member States, upon request and where operationally feasible, in line with its humanitarian mandate,” an official from the organisation told Reuters.

The men, who the US says were convicted of serious crimes and were in the US illegally, are citizens of Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen and Laos. Their convictions included murder and child rape, according to the US Department of Homeland Security said.

US officials also said the men’s home countries would not take them back.

Local media reported the men are being held at the Matsapha Correctional Complex, outside the country’s administrative capital of Mbabane, which includes Eswatini’s top maximum-security prison.

Their deportations were announced by the department on Tuesday and mark the continuation of president Donald Trump’s plan to send deportees to third countries they have no ties with after it was stalled by a legal challenge in the US.

The US state department’s most recent human rights report on Eswatini – an absolute monarchy – pointed to “credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government”.

There were credible reports that some political prisoners were tortured in detention, according to the state department. Prison conditions overall varied, though facilities were plagued with overcrowding, disrepair, poor nutrition and ventilation and unchecked prisoner-on-prisoner violence.

The Trump administration has been seeking to make deals with countries across the globe to accept immigrants that the US cannot easily deport to their home countries.

Though other administrations have conducted third-country removals, the Trump administration’s practice of sending immigrants to countries facing political and human rights crises have raised international alarm and condemnation.

Earlier this month the US completed deportation of eight other immigrants to South Sudan – a country beset with political instability and a hunger crisis. Prior to landing in South Sudan, the deportees were diverted to a US military based base in Djibouti, where they had been held in a converted shipping container for weeks. More than 200 Venezuelan men that the Trump administration deported to El Salvador – most of whom had no criminal histories in the US – also remain incarcerated in the country’s notorious mega-prison Cecot, where detainees have reported facing torture.

There have been no details on why Eswatini agreed to take the men, and Mdluli, the government spokesperson, said “the terms of the agreement between the US and Eswatini remain classified”.

Eswatini has said it was the result of months of negotiations between the two governments. South Sudan has also given no details of its agreement with the US to take deportees and has declined to say where the eight men sent there are being held.

Last week Tom Homan, the US border tsar, said he did not know what has happened to the eight men deported to South Sudan.

With the Associated Press and Reuters