The Trump administration deported five migrants from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen to the small Southern African nation of Eswatini on Tuesday, continuing “third country deportations” after the Supreme Court allowed the administration to maintain the practice last month.
The move comes after the Supreme Court in June paved the way for third country deportations — where immigrants are deported to a country that is not their home nation — lifting an order from a federal judge in Boston requiring the administration to give deportees advance notice of their removal.
“NEW: a safe third country deportation flight to Eswatini in Southern Africa has landed — This flight took individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back,” Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin wrote on X.
The five deportees all have a criminal history, according to McLaughlin’s post.
The Trump administration has made the practice of third country deportations a cornerstone of its immigration policy in an effort to speed up its mass deportation agenda, seeking to reach agreements with several nations to accept migrants from other countries.
“When you’ve got countries that won’t take their nationals back, and they can’t stay here, we find another country willing to accept them,” Trump border czar Tom Homan told POLITICO last week.
It was not immediately clear the scope or scale of any agreement the Trump administration may have come to with Eswatini before Tuesday’s deportations.
While previous administrations have also used third country removals as a deportation mechanism, the Trump administration’s practice of sending deportees to places like El Salvador, notorious for its CECOT mega-prison, and conflict-ridden South Sudan, has drawn scrutiny from immigration lawyers and advocates who have warned of the potential dangers of sending deportees to countries with known human rights violations.
The legal battle over third country deportations came to a head earlier this month, when the Supreme Court cleared the way for eight men to be sent to South Sudan after they were detained for six weeks in a shipping container on a U.S. military base in Djibouti while the administration fought to deport them in the courts.
Homan last week told POLITICO he was unsure of the status of the eight men, confirming that they had arrived in South Sudan but saying that he had no further information on their whereabouts, including whether or not they remained in detention.
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