MBABANE – The Kingdom of Eswatini has confirmed the arrival of 11 additional third-country nationals deported from the United States, bringing the total number of migrants transferred under a secretive bilateral agreement to at least 30.
The arrival, confirmed on July 9, 2026, marks the fourth group of migrants flown into the southern African monarchy. The program is part of a broader U.S. policy designed to remove individuals-many with criminal convictions-who cannot be returned to their home countries because those nations refuse to accept them.
Acting Government Spokesperson Thabile Mdluli stated the latest group arrived “under the existing bilateral arrangement with the Government of the United States of America.”
Mdluli noted that the individuals are “predominantly from African countries” and asserted that their fundamental rights would be protected in accordance with national laws and international obligations.
“Government assures the nation that appropriate measures are in place to safeguard the security and well-being of the Kingdom and its people whilst the TCNs are in the country,” Mdluli said.
Secret Bilateral Terms
The arrangement is governed by a Memorandum of Understanding that has not been made public by either Washington or Mbabane. However, documents obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request and cited by Amnesty International reveal the financial and operational scale of the deal and shed light on how Eswatini, a small landlocked monarchy of just over one million people, has been drawn into U.S. immigration enforcement policy far beyond its borders.
Under the terms of the agreement:
- Eswatini agreed to receive up to 160 third-country nationals.
- The United States agreed to pay Eswatini US$5.1 million.
- The funds are designated to strengthen the kingdom’s border and migration management capacity.
Officials have framed the deal as a form of capacity-building cooperation with a key security partner, aligning it with Eswatini’s obligations under treaties such as the UN Convention against Torture, which prohibits returning individuals to countries where they face a real risk of torture.
The government defended the program as being consistent with its international commitments, with Mdluli stating that the kingdom will continue to honor its obligations in a manner that “upholds its sovereignty, respects its national laws, and reflects its longstanding humanitarian values.” Critics, however, say the secrecy around the Memorandum of Understanding has prevented Parliament and the public from scrutinizing whether those values are in fact being upheld.
Timeline of Deportations
The transfers began in mid-2025 as part of a pilot phase that has steadily expanded. Since then, four distinct groups have been delivered to Eswatini:
- July 2025: Five men from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba, and Yemen.
- October 2025: 10 deportees from Cambodia, Chad, Cuba, Ethiopia, Haiti, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
- March 2026: Four men from Somalia, Tanzania, and Sudan.
- July 9, 2026: 11 individuals, predominantly from African nations.
While authorities cited the successful repatriation of a Jamaican national in September 2025 as evidence that the program works and can result in onward returns to a person’s country of origin, the fate of the remaining detainees remains undisclosed. Eswatini has not provided a public breakdown of how many deportees have been released, removed to third countries, or remain in detention.
Legal and Human Rights Challenges
International human rights organizations have accused the U.S. of exploiting vulnerable states, specifically naming Eswatini and South Sudan as countries with limited leverage to resist U.S. demands and significant fiscal incentives to cooperate. They argue that such bilateral arrangements risk creating “offshoring” zones where migrants are held far from public scrutiny or access to lawyers and family.
Reports indicate that previously transferred men have been held at the Matsapha Correctional Complex, a maximum-security prison located approximately two kilometers from the international airport. Rights advocates say the use of a penal facility, rather than a dedicated immigration holding center, blurs the line between administrative detention and punitive imprisonment and makes independent monitoring more difficult.
Vongai Chikwanda, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, has challenged the legality of these transfers.
“This latest unlawful transfer makes clear that the United States is continuing to send people to Eswatini under a secretive third-country removal arrangement, and that Eswatini is continuing to hold them in unlawful detention without transparency or adequate legal safeguards,” Chikwanda said. “People with no known ties to Eswatini are transferred there and arbitrarily detained while their fate is decided behind closed doors.”
Rights groups further allege that detainees have been denied face-to-face consultations with local lawyers and lacked confidential telephone access to legal representatives in the United States, raising concerns that individuals may be unable to file asylum claims, appeal removal orders, or challenge their detention in either jurisdiction.
Judicial Scrutiny in the U.S. and Africa
The policy has faced significant legal opposition in both jurisdictions, testing the boundaries of executive power over migration enforcement and the role of courts in policing cross-border security cooperation.
In February 2026, the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that the Department of Homeland Security’s third-country removal policy was unlawful. The court found that migrants cannot be deported to countries not involved in their original removal proceedings without meaningful notice and a genuine opportunity to seek protection from torture or persecution. This followed litigation in D.V.D. v. Department of Homeland Security, where the US Supreme Court stayed a lower court injunction pending a full hearing on the merits of the policy and its compatibility with U.S. obligations under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
In Eswatini and across the continent, the program continues to be contested at regional and national levels:
- December 2025: A coalition of lawyers and human rights organizations lodged a complaint with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights regarding the prolonged detention of three deportees, arguing that Eswatini’s participation in the scheme violates protections against arbitrary detention and refoulement.
- Ongoing: A legal challenge brought by Eswatini-based activists seeking to overturn the bilateral agreement remains before the national courts, with petitioners asking judges to compel the government to disclose the full Memorandum of Understanding and subject any future transfers to parliamentary oversight.
The government of King Mswati III has not disclosed the current location of the 11 latest arrivals, nor has it provided a timeline for their repatriation or legal resolution. With the transfer cap set at 160 people and only around a fifth of that number publicly acknowledged so far, both the U.S. and Eswatini now face intensifying pressure to explain how long the scheme will continue and under what safeguards future arrivals would be held.