Eswatini accused of secretly releasing US deportees at night

Eswatini has reportedly been secretly releasing deportees sent by the United States at night, allowing them to cross illegally into neighbouring South Africa through informal border points.

One of them, Laotian national Phone Chomsavanh, was released from a maximum-security prison on Sunday after more than a year in detention and has since landed in Johannesburg en route to Laos.

Chomsavanh was among five immigrants sent to Eswatini in July 2025 under the Trump administration’s controversial third-country deportation programme. He was held at Matsapha Correctional Complex near the administrative capital, Mbabane.

Chomsavanh’s US-based lawyer, Tin Thanh Nguyen said his client was told only shortly before the military cargo plane landed that he was being deported to Eswatini.

He said Chomsavanh and the four others sent with him had been convicted of serious crimes in the US but had already completed their sentences.

“He had already served his time. Instead they put him on a plane without telling him where it was headed and left him in a prison in a country he had never heard of, where nobody ever accused him of anything,” Nguyen said.

“He sat there for more than a year. No notice, no hearing, no chance to object. That is not due process by any definition.”

Nguyen said Chomsavanh was born in a refugee camp in Thailand after his parents fled Laos and moved to the United States with his family when he was seven.

He is one of about 500 immigrants deported by the US to African countries that are not their home nations since the programme began last year, according to advocacy groups Human Rights First and Refugees International.

Under an agreement between the two countries, the US was to send about 160 alleged illegal immigrants to Eswatini, Africa’s last absolute monarchy. Eswatini has so far received about 30.

The Trump administration paid Eswatini US$5.1 million to take the deportees, some of whom had previous convictions for serious crimes including child rape, armed robbery and murder.

The Eswatini government has been secretive about the releases. It previously allowed the deportees to move freely, visiting shopping malls and national traditional events.

Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Prince Simelane later told Parliament that the deportees “are not dangerous criminals but they are not wanted in the US by the President Donald Trump administration”.

More: India Today