FILE - Matsapha Correctional Complex is seen in Matsapha, near Mbabane, Eswatini, Thursday July 17, 2025. (AP Photo, File)

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Five men deported by the United States to Eswatini in July have been held in a maximum-security prison in the African nation for seven weeks without charge or explanation and with no access to legal counsel, their lawyers said Tuesday.

They accused the Trump administration's third-country deportation program of denying their clients due process.

The New York-based Legal Aid Society said that it was representing one of the men, Jamaican national Orville Etoria, and that he had been “inexplicably and illegally” sent to Eswatini when his home country was willing to accept him back.

That contradicted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which said when it deported the five men with criminal records that they were being sent to Eswatini because their home countries refused to take them. Jamaica's foreign minister has also said that the Caribbean country didn't refuse to take back deportees.

Etoria was the first of at least 20 deportees sent by the U.S. to various African nations in the last two months to be identified publicly.

Expanding deportation program

The deportations are part of the Trump administration’s expanding third-country program to send migrants to countries in Africa that they have no ties with to get them off U.S. soil.

Since July, the U.S. has deported migrants to South Sudan, Eswatini and Rwanda, while a fourth African nation, Uganda, says it has agreed to a deal in principle with the U.S. to accept deportees.

Washington has said it wants to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose case has been a flashpoint over U.S. President Donald Trump's hard-line immigration policies, to Uganda after he was wrongly deported to his native El Salvador in March.

Etoria served a 25-year prison sentence and was granted parole in 2021, the Legal Aid Society said, but was now being held in Eswatini's main maximum-security prison for an undetermined period of time despite completing that sentence.

The U.S. Homeland Security Department said that he was convicted of murder. The agency posted on X in reference to a New York Times report on Estoria, saying that it “will continue enforcing the law at full speed — without apology.”

It didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

The Legal Aid Society said that an Eswatini lawyer acting on behalf of all five men being held in prison there has been repeatedly denied access to them by prison officials since they arrived in the tiny southern African nation bordering South Africa in mid-July.

The other four men are citizens of Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and Yemen.

‘Indefinite detention’

A separate lawyer representing the two men from Laos and Vietnam said that his clients also served their criminal sentences in the U.S. and had “been released into the community.”

"Then, without warning and explanation from either the U.S. or Eswatini governments, they were arbitrarily arrested and sent to a country to which they have never ever been," the lawyer, Tin Thanh Nguyen, said in a statement. “They are now being punished indefinitely for a sentence they already served.”

He said that the U.S. government was “orchestrating secretive third-country transfers with no meaningful legal process, resulting in indefinite detention.”

U.S. Homeland Security said those two men had been convicted of charges including child rape and second-degree murder.

A third lawyer, Alma David, said that she represented the two men from Yemen and Cuba who are also being held in the same prison and denied access to lawyers. She said she had been told by the head of the Eswatini prison that only the U.S. Embassy could grant access to the men.

“Since when does the U.S. Embassy have jurisdiction over Eswatini’s national prisons?” she said in a statement, adding the men weren't told a reason for their detention, and "no lawyer has been permitted to visit them.” David said all five were being held at U.S. taxpayers' expense.

Secretive deals

The deportation deals the U.S. has struck in Africa have been largely secretive, and with countries with questionable rights records.

Authorities in South Sudan have given little information on where eight men sent there in early July are being held or what their fate might be. They were also described by U.S. authorities as dangerous criminals from South Sudan, Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar and Vietnam.

The five men in Eswatini are being held at the Matsapha Correctional Complex. It's the same prison where Eswatini, which is ruled by a king as Africa's last absolute monarchy, has imprisoned pro-democracy campaigners amid reports of abuse that includes beatings and the denial of food to inmates.

Eswatini authorities said when the five men arrived that they were being held in solitary confinement.

Another seven migrants were deported by the U.S. to Rwanda in mid-August, Rwandan authorities said. They didn't say where they are being held or give any information on their identities.

The deportations to Rwanda were kept secret at the time and only announced last week.

___

AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

News from © The Associated Press, 2025