U.S. deports immigrants from Jamaica, Cuba, and other countries to the African kingdom of Eswatini

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security logo is seen during a news conference in Washington, Feb. 25, 2015. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — The United States has sent five immigrants it says were convicted of serious crimes to the African nation of Eswatini, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed, in an expansion of the Trump administration’s largely secretive third-country deportation program.

The U.S. has already deported eight men to another African country, South Sudan, after the Supreme Court lifted restrictions on sending people to countries where they have no ties. The South Sudanese government has declined to say where those men, also described as violent criminals, are after it took custody of them nearly two weeks ago.

In a late-night post on X on Tuesday, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the five men sent to Eswatini, who are citizens of Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen and Laos, had arrived on a deportation plane.

She said they were all convicted criminals and “individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.”

The men “have been terrorizing American communities” but were now “off of American soil,” McLaughlin added.

McLaughlin said they had been convicted of crimes including murder and child rape and one was a “confirmed” gang member. Her social media posts included mug shots of the men and what she said were their criminal records and sentences. They were not named.

It was not clear if the men had been deported from prison or if they were detained in immigration operations, and the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t immediately respond to requests for clarification.

The Eswatini government said Wednesday the men, which it referred to as “prisoners” and “inmates,” were being held in isolated units in unnamed correctional facilities in Eswatini but were considered to be in transit and would ultimately be sent back to their home countries.

In a series of posts on X, the Eswatini government said it and the U.S. would collaborate with the United Nations’ migration agency to facilitate that. It gave no timeframe for that to happen but said that it would ensure “due process and respect for human rights is followed” in what it described as a repatriation process.

Four of the five countries where the men are from have historically been resistant to taking back some citizens when they’re deported from the U.S. That issue has been a reoccurring problem for Homeland Security even before the Trump administration. Some countries refuse to take back any of their citizens, while others won’t accept people who have committed crimes in the U.S.

An absolute monarchy

Eswatini, previously called Swaziland, is a country of about 1.2 million people between South Africa and Mozambique. It is one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies and the last in Africa. King Mswati III has ruled by decree since 1986.

Political parties are effectively banned and pro-democracy groups have said for years that Mswati III has crushed political dissent, sometimes violently.

Pro-democracy protests erupted in Eswatini in 2021, when dozens were killed, allegedly by security forces. Eswatini authorities have been accused of conducting political assassinations of pro-democracy activists and imprisoning others.

Like with South Sudan, rights groups criticized the Trump administration’s choice to send the deportees to Eswatini, given its record.

Amy Fischer, Amnesty International USA’s director of refugee and migrant rights, said the U.S. State Department’s own 2023 human rights report found credible accounts of unlawful or arbitrary killings by security forces in Eswatini, impunity for abuses, and harsh prison conditions.

“As a result, anyone returned to this country is at risk of serious human rights violations. The cruelty is the point,” she said.

U.S. is seeking more deals

The Trump administration has said it is seeking more deals with African nations to take deportees from the U.S. Leaders from some of the five West African nations who met last week with President Donald Trump at the White House said the issue of migration and their countries possibly taking deportees from the U.S. was discussed.

Some nations have pushed back. Nigeria, which wasn’t part of that White House summit, said it has rejected pressure from the U.S. to take deportees who are citizens of other countries.

The U.S. also has sent hundreds of Venezuelans and others to Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama, but has identified Africa as a continent where it might find more governments willing to strike deportation agreements.

Rwanda’s foreign minister told the AP last month that talks were underway with the U.S. about a potential agreement to host deported migrants. A British government plan announced in 2022 to deport rejected asylum-seekers to Rwanda was ruled illegal by the U.K. Supreme Court last year.

`Not a dumping ground’

The eight men deported by the U.S. to war-torn South Sudan, where they arrived early this month, previously spent weeks at a U.S. military base in nearby Djibouti, located on the northeast border of Ethiopia, as the case over the legality of sending them there played out.

The South Sudanese government has not released details of its agreement with the U.S. to take deportees, nor has it said what will happen to the men. A prominent civil society leader there said South Sudan was “not a dumping ground for criminals.”

Analysts say some African nations might be willing to take third-country deportees in return for more favorable terms from the U.S. in negotiations over tariffs, foreign aid and investment, and restrictions on travel visas.

The Eswatini government said its arrangement with the U.S. posed no security threat to the people of Eswatini. “This exercise is the result of months of robust high-level engagements between the US Government & Eswatini,” it said.

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Gerald Imray And Michelle Gumede, The Associated Press

Gumede reported from Johannesburg. Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed to this report.