Activists and human rights groups have accused United States President Donald Trump of using African countries as a “dumping ground” for criminals he wants to deport after five men were deported from the US to the tiny kingdom of Eswatini.
On July 16, a deportation flight carrying five men from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen, all of whom have been convicted of crimes in the US, landed in Eswatini, the last African country governed by a monarch with absolute power. The deportations were part of Trump’s “third country” plan to deport people whose own countries are unwilling to take them back.
Eswatini is the second African nation that the US has deported criminals to. Also this month, Washington said it had sent eight “uniquely barbaric monsters” to conflict-torn South Sudan.
Last month, the US Supreme Court allowed the deportations of foreign nationals to unrelated third countries. Since then, international rights groups and civil society groups from African nations have raised alarms of human rights abuses.
“The US government sees us as a criminal dumpsite and undermines Emaswati [the people of Eswatini],” Wandile Dludlu, a pro-democracy activist and deputy president of the country’s largest opposition movement, the People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), told Al Jazeera. As a political party, PUDEMO is a banned organisation in Eswatini.
So is Trump planning to use African nations as a “dumping ground” for deportees?
Who are the five men Trump deported to Eswatini?
This month, Tricia McLaughlin, US Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary, said the deportation flight to Eswatini had taken away “individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back”.
“These depraved monsters have been terrorizing American communities but thanks to [Trump] they are off of American soil,” she wrote in a post
Without sharing their names, McLaughlin confirmed the five were nationals from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen.
She said all were convicted criminals – including for offences of child rape, murder, robbery, gang ties and homicides – and had been given prison sentences as long as 25 years.
US Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin confirmed the five deported men are from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba and Yemen [Handout/@TriciaOhio/X]
What agreement has the Trump administration made with Eswatini?
Trump rode to victory in last year’s presidential election on the back of a campaign with mass deportations as its centrepiece.
Since then, the Trump administration has been negotiating a third-country deportation agreement with several nations, including Eswatini, which will allow it to deport foreign nationals convicted of serious crimes who have been rejected by their home countries.
While the exact terms remain classified, the agreement between Eswatini and the US reportedly emerged after “months of robust high-level engagements”, the kingdom’s acting spokesperson, Thabile Mdluli, said.
Mdluli also said the kingdom would collaborate with the White House and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) “to facilitate the transit of these inmates to their countries of origin”.
However, “there are no timelines at present” for their repatriation, she told CNN in an interview.
Daniel Akech, a senior analyst for South Sudan at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera that some African governments are agreeing to receive convicted deportees as a “goodwill gesture, aiming to improve US ties and be in [Trump’s] good books”.
But he said they have also “implicitly dismissed human rights concerns and the lack of transparency on how third nationals’ safety is ensured”.
Akech said the African Union and the United Nations could partner with receiving countries to monitor the process of US deportations “to ensure that the deportees are protected and their living conditions are good”.