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       MBABANE: The United States has deported five migrants convicted of crimes to the small African kingdom of Eswatini, ruled by an absolute monarch accused of human rights abuses, officials have said.

       The deported migrants are nationals of Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam and Yemen.

       The deportation of migrants to countries which are not their own is part of US President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to expel millions of undocumented migr-ants from the United States.

       His administration has defended so-called third-country deportations as necessary, since the home nations of some of those targeted for removal sometimes refuse to accept them.

       But rights experts have warned the deportations risk breaking international law by sending people to nations where they face the risk of torture, abduction and other abuses.

       “These criminal illegal aliens are so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back,” the Depa-rtment of Homeland Security (DHS) wrote on Tuesday on X. They were convicted of violent crimes such as child rape and murder, according to the DHS.

       Eswatini’s government said the five men were being held in isolated units at a correctional facility and would “facilitate the transit of these inmates to their countries of origin”. “The nation is assured that these inmates pose no threat to the country or its citizens,” government spokesman Thabile Mdluli said in a statement.

       An immigration official said the men arrived in the capital Mbabane aboard a US military plane and were transferred directly to waiting vehicles under heavy security.

       The men were taken to Matsapha Maximum Corr-ectional Centre, located some 31 kilometres (19 miles) south of Mbabane, a prison official said.

       “The deported hardened criminals were admitted here… in the new cells which have just been built,” he said.

       Published in Dawn, July 17th, 2025