Five im­mi­grants de­port­ed by the Unit­ed States to the small south­ern African na­tion of Eswa­ti­ni un­der the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s third-coun­try pro­gram are be­ing held in soli­tary con­fine­ment in var­i­ous pris­ons for an un­de­ter­mined time, a gov­ern­ment spokesper­son said.

Tha­bile Md­luli, the Eswa­ti­ni gov­ern­ment spokesper­son, de­clined to iden­ti­fy the cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties where the five men are, cit­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns. She said they were be­ing held in soli­tary con­fine­ment away from oth­er in­mates.

She added that Eswa­ti­ni planned to ul­ti­mate­ly repa­tri­ate the five to their home coun­tries with the help of a Unit­ed Na­tions agency. Md­luli told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press it wasn’t clear how long that would take.

The men, who the U.S. says were con­vict­ed of se­ri­ous crimes and were in the U.S. il­le­gal­ly, are cit­i­zens of Viet­nam, Ja­maica, Cu­ba, Yemen and Laos. Their con­vic­tions in­clud­ed mur­der and child rape, the U.S. De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty said, de­scrib­ing them as “unique­ly bar­bar­ic.”

They had been jailed in the U.S. be­fore be­ing sent to Eswa­ti­ni, ac­cord­ing to Md­luli.

Their de­por­ta­tions were an­nounced by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty on Tues­day and mark the con­tin­u­a­tion of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s plan to send de­por­tees to third coun­tries they have no ties with af­ter it was stalled by a le­gal chal­lenge in the Unit­ed States.

A new coun­try for de­por­tees

Eswa­ti­ni, a coun­try of 1.2 mil­lion peo­ple bor­der­ing South Africa, is the lat­est na­tion to ac­cept third-coun­try de­por­tees from the U.S. The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has sent hun­dreds of Venezue­lans and oth­ers to Cos­ta Ri­ca, El Sal­vador and Pana­ma, and de­port­ed eight men ear­li­er this month to South Su­dan, al­so an African coun­try.

The de­por­tees to South Su­dan are cit­i­zens of Cu­ba, Laos, Mex­i­co, Myan­mar, Viet­nam and South Su­dan. They were held for weeks in a con­vert­ed ship­ping con­tain­er at a U.S. mil­i­tary base in the near­by coun­try of Dji­bouti un­til a Supreme Court rul­ing cleared the way for them to be fi­nal­ly sent to South Su­dan. The U.S. al­so de­scribed them as vi­o­lent crim­i­nals.

Eswa­ti­ni’s gov­ern­ment con­firmed on Wednes­day that the lat­est five de­por­tees were in its cus­tody af­ter land­ing on a de­por­ta­tion plane from the U.S.

Lo­cal me­dia had re­port­ed they were all held at the Mat­sapha Cor­rec­tion­al Com­plex near the ad­min­is­tra­tive cap­i­tal of Mba­bane when they ar­rived. The com­plex in­cludes Eswa­ti­ni’s top max­i­mum-se­cu­ri­ty prison. It wasn’t clear if some of the men were still there.

The men’s fate is un­clear

The Eswa­ti­ni gov­ern­ment said the men are con­sid­ered to be “in tran­sit” and will even­tu­al­ly be sent to their home coun­tries. The U.S. and Eswa­ti­ni gov­ern­ments would work with the U.N. mi­gra­tion agency to do that, it said.

The U.N. agency — the In­ter­na­tion­al Or­ga­ni­za­tion for Mi­gra­tion or IOM — said it was not in­volved in the op­er­a­tion and has not been ap­proached to as­sist in the mat­ter but would be will­ing to help “in line with its hu­man­i­tar­i­an man­date.”

Eswa­ti­ni’s state­ment that the men would be sent home was in con­trast to U.S. claims they were sent to Eswa­ti­ni be­cause their home coun­tries re­fused to take them back.

It’s un­clear how send­ing the men to Eswa­ti­ni would make it eas­i­er for them to be de­port­ed home. There was al­so no time­frame for that as it de­pends on sev­er­al fac­tors, in­clud­ing en­gage­ments with the IOM, Md­luli said.

“We are not yet in a po­si­tion to de­ter­mine the time­lines for the repa­tri­a­tion,” she wrote.

Four of the five coun­tries where the men are from have his­tor­i­cal­ly re­sist­ed tak­ing back some of their cit­i­zens de­port­ed from the U.S., which has been a re­oc­cur­ring prob­lem for Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty. Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty as­sis­tant sec­re­tary Tri­cia McLaugh­lin said the ad­min­is­tra­tion was hap­py the men were “off of Amer­i­can soil” when she an­nounced their de­por­ta­tions.

It’s al­so not clear if the men are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by lawyers.

An­oth­er se­cre­tive deal

There have been no de­tails on why Eswa­ti­ni agreed to take the men and Md­luli, the gov­ern­ment spokesper­son, said “the terms of the agree­ment be­tween the U.S. and Eswa­ti­ni re­main clas­si­fied.”

Eswa­ti­ni has said it was the re­sult of months of ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween the two gov­ern­ments. South Su­dan has al­so giv­en no de­tails of its agree­ment with the U.S. to take de­por­tees and has de­clined to say where the eight men sent there are be­ing held.

Some an­a­lysts say African na­tions might be will­ing to take de­por­tees from the U.S. in re­turn for more fa­vor­able re­la­tions with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, which has cut for­eign aid to poor coun­tries and threat­ened them with trade tar­iffs.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has al­so said it’s seek­ing more de­por­ta­tion deals with oth­er coun­tries.

Rights groups have ques­tioned the coun­tries the U.S. has cho­sen to deal with, as South Su­dan and Eswa­ti­ni have both been crit­i­cized for hav­ing re­pres­sive gov­ern­ments.

Eswa­ti­ni is Africa’s on­ly ab­solute monar­chy, mean­ing the king has pow­er over gov­ern­ment and rules by de­cree. Po­lit­i­cal par­ties are banned and pro-democ­ra­cy protests have been quelled vi­o­lent­ly in the past.

Sev­er­al rights groups have crit­i­cized Eswa­ti­ni since pro-democ­ra­cy protests erupt­ed there in 2021, cit­ing dead­ly crack­downs by se­cu­ri­ty forces and abu­sive con­di­tions in pris­ons, in­clud­ing at the Mat­sapha Cor­rec­tion­al Com­plex, where pro-democ­ra­cy ac­tivists are held. —CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP)

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Sto­ry by GER­ALD IM­RAY | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Mogo­mot­si Magome and Michelle Gumede in Jo­han­nes­burg con­tributed to this re­port.