Trump administration restarts third country deportations with flight to Eswatini [View all]
Source: NBC News
July 16, 2025, 6:52 AM EDT
The Department of Homeland Security resumed third country deportation flights on Tuesday by deporting five immigrant detainees, all from different countries, to the small nation of Eswatini in Southern Africa.
The five men from Vietnam, Laos, Jamaica, Cuba and Yemen have criminal backgrounds ranging from murder to sexual assault, according to a social media post by the DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.
“This flight took individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back,” McLaughlin wrote. It’s not clear if the men are in law enforcement custody in Eswatini. Mclaughlin told NBC News, “That’s up to Eswatini.”
The landlocked country is located between South Africa and Mozambique and occupies an area slightly smaller than New Jersey. Representatives for the government of Eswatini and their embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-admin-restarts-third-country-deportations-flight-eswatini-rcna219041
I had to go look up where "Eswatini" was because I had never heard of it. It is actually the renamed "Swaziland" in southeastern Africa. The ruling Monarch officially renamed the country in 2018 during the 50th anniversary year of their independence from British colonial rule.
As a side note, I wouldn't be surprised that like we did with those sent to El Salvador, we may be "paying" these countries to take people, which sounds like some form of human trafficking to me, but I haven't seen anything explicitly mentioning that outside of our arrangement with El Salvador.
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