CAPE TOWN: 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 US 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 US 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 US soil.
Since July, the US 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 US to accept deportees.
Washington has said it wants to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose case has been a flashpoint over US 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 US 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 US and had “been released into the community.”
“Then, without warning and explanation from either the US 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 US government was “orchestrating secretive third-country transfers with no meaningful legal process, resulting in indefinite detention.”
US 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 US Embassy could grant access to the men.
“Since when does the US 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 US taxpayers’ expense.
Secretive deals
The deportation deals the US 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 US 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 US 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.
Lawyers for 5 men deported to an African prison accuse Trump’s program of denying them due process
https://arab.news/vcv3n
Lawyers for 5 men deported to an African prison accuse Trump’s program of denying them due process
- 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
Greek coast guard search for 15 after migrant boat found adrift
- The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water
ATHENS: Greek coast guard were on Monday searching for 15 people who fell into the water from a migrant boat that was found drifting off the coast of Crete with 17 bodies on board.
The 17 fatalities, all of them men, were discovered on Saturday on the craft, which was taking on water and partially deflated, some 26 nautical miles (48 kilometers) southwest of the island.
Post-mortem examinations were being carried out to determine how they died but Greek public television channel ERT suggested they may have suffered from hypothermia or dehydration.
A Greek coast guard spokeswoman told AFP that two survivors reported that “15 people fell in the water” after the motor cut out on Thursday, then the vessel drifted for two days.
At the time, Crete and much of the rest of Greece was battered by heavy rain and storms.
The two survivors reported that the vessel had become unstable due to bad weather and there was no means of getting shelter, food or water.
The vessel had 34 people on board and had left the Libyan port of Tobruk on Wednesday, the Greek port authorities said. Most of those who died came from Sudan and Egypt.
It was initially spotted by a Turkish-flagged cargo ship on Saturday, triggering a search that included ships and aircraft from the Greek coast guard and the European Union border agency Frontex.
Migrants have been trying to reach Crete from Libya for the last year, as a way of entering the European Union. But the Mediterranean crossing is perilous.
In Brussels, the EU’s 27 members on Monday backed a significant tightening of immigration policy, including the concept of returning failed asylum-seekers to “return hubs” outside the bloc.
The UN refugee agency said more than 16,770 asylum seekers in the EU have arrived on Crete since the start of the year — more than any other island in the Aegean Sea.
Greece’s conservative government has also toughened its migration policy, suspending asylum claims for three months, particularly those coming to Crete from Libya.
