DHS Resumes Third-Country Deportations With Flight to Eswatini
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has restarted third-country deportation flights, beginning with the removal of five detainees to Eswatini, a small landlocked country in southern Africa.
The five individuals—originally from Vietnam, Laos, Jamaica, Cuba, and Yemen—were deported on Tuesday. According to DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, all five men have criminal records, with offenses ranging from murder to sexual assault.
“This flight took individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back,” McLaughlin wrote in a social media post.
It remains unclear what legal status or custody arrangements the men now face in Eswatini. When asked by NBC News, McLaughlin said, “That’s up to Eswatini.”
Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, is bordered by South Africa and Mozambique and is slightly smaller in area than the U.S. state of New Jersey.
Government officials from Eswatini, including their embassy in Washington, D.C., did not respond to requests for comment.
The deportation flight marks the return of a controversial immigration practice allowing the U.S. to remove migrants to countries other than their own, often with minimal diplomatic guarantees. This coincides with new ICE guidelines permitting officers, in certain situations, to deport noncitizens to third countries within as little as six hours—even without assurances that the individuals will not face persecution or torture upon arrival.
Under the updated policy, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) must provide the detainee with a removal notice that states the destination country, written in a language the person can understand. However, the memo clarifies that ICE agents are not required to ask whether the migrant fears being deported to that country. If the detainee voluntarily expresses fear, they will be referred for a screening process within 24 hours.
Even then, ICE retains the authority to attempt deportation to an alternative country, rather than the one the person initially expressed fear about.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently cleared the way for DHS to resume these expedited third-country deportations in a late June decision. That ruling followed a legal dispute sparked by a flight in May, in which eight migrants were deported from Texas, reportedly bound for South Sudan. The migrants were later held in Djibouti, leading to a court battle over the legality of the transfer.
In filings to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration claimed it had received diplomatic assurances from South Sudan that the deportees would not be subjected to torture, in accordance with the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
