A small African nation currently imprisoning five immigrants deported from the United States reportedly asked the Trump administration for half a billion dollars to detain them.
The administration resumed a policy of deporting immigrant detainees to so-called third countries in July, starting with the tiny African nation of Eswatini. Eswatini’s government at one point requested millions of dollars in exchange, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.
Those documents also show that Eswatini was open to detaining 150 people from other nations for more than $10 million from the United States, the newspaper reported.
Eswatini diplomats told The Independent in July that they were blindsided by the Trump administration’s plan to send a group of men with criminal convictions to their country; they had only learned about the flights from social media.
Eswatini officials said they plan to arrange for those detainees to be sent back to their countries of origin, while activists in the country are challenging what they say is an unconstitutional secret agreement with the Trump administration.
The Eswatini government said the men “will be repatriated” and the United Nations International Organization for Migration is working with the country to “facilitate the transit of these inmates to their countries of origin.”
Nearly two months later, those men remain imprisoned in Eswatini.
Officials there had also asked whether the United States expected the deportees to be put on trial and sentenced by local officials once they arrived, according to The Times.
The Independent has requested comment from Homeland Security, Eswatini officials and the UN’s International Organization for Migration for comment.
One of those deported men, Orville Etoria, had completed a prison sentence in 2021 after he was convicted of murder in New York in 1996. He was deported to Eswatini in July, and he is reportedly locked up in Matsapha Correctional Complex despite not facing any new criminal charges.
The Jamaican citizen arrived in the United States on a green card in 1976 at age 12, but an immigration judge revoked his permissions while he was incarcerated. After he was released, he was allowed to legally live and work in the country on the condition that he complete regular check-in appointments with immigration authorities.
The 62-year-old completed a bachelor’s degree while behind bars, then began working at a men’s shelter and pursued a master’s degree in divinity after his release, The Times reported.
Homeland Security officials labeled Etoria and the other men sent to Eswatini “depraved monsters” who are “so uniquely barbaric” that those countries won’t accept them.
Jamaican officials rejected the administration’s claim that the country is not cooperating.
“The Government has not refused the return of any of our nationals to Jamaica,” according to Jamaican foreign minister Kamina J Smith.
Jamaica will “continue its engagements” with the Trump administration to make arrangements “to facilitate the individual’s return to Jamaica,” she wrote in July.
Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, is a land-locked nation of roughly 1.2 million people, bordered by South Africa on virtually all sides and by the southern tip of Mozambique to the east. Its government is the last absolute monarchy on the continent.
The government has failed to investigate extrajudicial killings, journalists and dissidents face threats of arbitrary arrests and detentions, and detainees are “subjected to torture and other ill-treatment,” according to Amnesty International.
Trump’s own State Department tells travelers to “exercise increased caution in Eswatini due to crime and civil unrest.”
Critics and civil rights attorneys have argued that the administration is unnecessarily putting immigrants at severe risk of abuse and violence by sending them to so-called “third countries” where they do not have citizenship, family or any other connections.
A June decision from the Supreme Court opened the door for government officials to send deportees to those countries, including places with poor human rights records and no due process.
The Eswatini flight appeared to be the successful first third-country deportation after Immigration and Customs Enforcement told officials that migrants can be deported from the United States to countries other than their own with as little as six hours’ notice — or no notice at all.
Countries that provide “diplomatic assurances” that they won’t face torture and abuse could be deported without any advance notice, according to the memo. If the State Department believes those assurances are “credible,” then ICE may deport someone to that country “without the need for further procedures.”
Since taking office, the Trump administration has held hundreds of immigrants at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and deported dozens of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a brutal maximum-security prison in El Salvador, which marked the administration’s first arrangement of third-country removals.
After a weeks-long legal battle, the administration deported eight men to war-torn South Sudan in July, though only one of them is from that country.
They remain incarcerated there while South Sudan officials negotiate efforts to send them to their home countries.
Rwanda and Uganda have also reached agreements with the Trump administration to receive deportees. At least seven deportees arrived in Rwanda last month, according of officials there.
