Eswatini says it is holding U.S. deportees in prisons, aims to repatriate them

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MBABANE (Reuters) -Eswatini’s government said on Wednesday that it was holding five third-country nationals deported from the United States in isolated prison units under a deal with President Donald Trump’s administration, but sought to eventually send them home.

The U.S. Homeland Security Department said on Tuesday that a deportation flight carrying immigrants from five countries had landed in Eswatini, after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted limits on deporting migrants to countries that are not their own.

The five individuals on the flight were convicted criminals from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen, it said. U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said on X their home countries had refused to take them back.

“Government acknowledges the widespread concern regarding the deportation of third-country prisoners from the United States of America into the Kingdom of Eswatini,” said Eswatini’s acting government spokesperson Thabile Mdluli in a statement.

“Indeed, five inmates are currently housed in our correctional facilities in isolated units,” she said, adding that this was “the result of months of robust high-level engagements” with the United States government.

Eswatini, a landlocked nation in Southern Africa, is home to about 1.2 million people and ruled by an absolute monarch who has been in power since 1986.

The statement said that Eswatini and the United States would “collaborate with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to facilitate the transit of the inmates to their countries of origin.”

The IOM could not immediately be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Lunga Masuku; Additional reporting by Sfundo Parakozov and Alexander Winning; Writing by Nellie Peyton;Editing by Tim Cocks)