Trump Administration Deports Five Men to Eswatini, Expanding Global Gulag in Africa

The United States expelled five men to the Southern African country of Eswatini on Tuesday as part of its ongoing efforts to exile immigrants to so-called third countries The move closely followed the United States deportation of eight men seven with no connection to the country to violence-plagued South Sudan The Trump administration has been expanding its global gulag for expelled immigrants exploring deals with more than a quarter of the world s nations to accept deported persons who are not their citizens Various of these countries are beset by violence have been excoriated by the State Department for human rights abuses or both Tricia McLaughlin a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Safety celebrated the expulsion of the five men who hail from Cuba Jamaica Laos Vietnam and Yemen In the U S McLaughlin reported the men were convicted of serious crimes and had been sentenced to vital time in prison This flight took individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back she wrote on X calling the men depraved monsters Neither the Department of Homeland Safeguard Immigration and Customs Enforcement the State Department nor the authorities of Eswatini responded to The Intercept s requests for comment before publication The State Department s bulk contemporary human rights overview on Eswatini a tiny absolute monarchy landlocked by South Africa and Mozambique paints a damning portrait It refers to credible reports of arbitrary or unlawful killings including extrajudicial killings torture and cruel inhuman or degrading rehabilitation or punishment by the cabinet serious problems with the independence of the judiciary and the incarceration of political prisoners Eswatini is an absolute monarchy in a severe economic predicament with a problematic human rights record On what conditions has it agreed to take these people Anwen Hughes the senior director of legal strategy for refugee programs at Human Rights First and one of the lawyers representing the men exiled to South Sudan informed The Intercept the latest expulsion exposes the deportees to the same dangers and uncertainty faced by her clients The fact that I genuinely don t know what these people will face in Eswatini is part of the reason we re arguing that people being removed to a third country need to be given meaningful notice so they have specific chance to figure out what this is going to mean for them Hughes noted But even with notice the opacity of the deals the United States is concluding with these third countries remains a obstacle Last month the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could resume expelling immigrants to countries other than their own without any chance to object on the grounds that they might be tortured The court s latest decisions have been a boon to the administration which has been employing strong-arm tactics with dozens of smaller weaker and economically dependent nations to expand its global gulag The Trump administration earlier this year expelled hundreds of African and Asian immigrants to Costa Rica and Panama including people from Afghanistan Cameroon China India Iran Nepal Pakistan Sri Lanka Turkey Uzbekistan and Vietnam It began using the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center or CECOT in Tecoluca El Salvador as a foreign prison to disappear Venezuelan immigrants in March Related Trump s Global Gulag Search Expands to Nations Uzbekistan received more than deportees from the United States including not only Uzbeks but citizens of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan according to a message the Department of Homeland Measure published in April Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum reported the same month that her authorities had already accepted roughly non-Mexicans from the U S for humanitarian reasons Last month the U S struck a deal with Kosovo Europe s youngest country to accept deportees from other nations The Intercept previously identified Eswatini formerly known as Swaziland as a country with which the Trump administration explored an agreement to accept third-country nationals Eswatini is an absolute monarchy in a severe economic problem and with a problematic human rights record explained Hughes On what conditions has it agreed to take these people What if anything has it notified the United States will happen to them once there We don t know The Trump administration s third-country deportation deals are being conducted in secret and neither the State Department nor Immigration and Customs Enforcement will discuss them With the green light from the Supreme Court thousands of immigrants are in danger of being disappeared into this framework of deportee dumping grounds Last week ICE agents circulated guidance allowing for rapid deportations if the State Department receives guarantees that the immigrants will not be persecuted in the third country Even without such assurances representatives can still expel deportees with just hours notice or in as little as six hours in exigent circumstances Related ICE Commented They Were Being Flown to Louisiana Their Flight Landed in Africa After being detained for weeks on a U S military base in Djibouti the men deported to South Sudan on July have been held incommunicado An review by The Intercept identified that before the men boarded a plane bound for Africa in May U S functionaries reported them that they were being sent on a short trip from Texas to another ICE facility in Louisiana Numerous hours later the plane landed in Djibouti Members of Congress have since expressed outrage at the deception and one called on DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to resign In a blistering dissent last month Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor took aim at the court s complicity in third-country deportations Apparently the Court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in far-flung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Regime to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled she wrote The post Trump Administration Deports Five Men to Eswatini Expanding Global Gulag in Africa appeared first on The Intercept