CE TOWN, South Africa — A Laotian citizen deported by the United States to Eswatini under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown was released from a maximum security prison in the African nation on Sunday after being held there for more than a year, his lawyer said.
Phone Chomsavanh was among five immigrants deported to Eswatini — where he has no ties — in July 2025 in the early days of the Trump administration’s secretive and highly contentious third-country deportation program. Chomsavanh’s U.S.-based lawyer, Tin Thanh Nguyen, said in a statement announcing his release that he had only been informed that he was being deported to Eswatini shortly before a military cargo plane carrying him and other deportees landed there more than 14 months ago. Chomsavanh is one of around 500 immigrants who have been deported from the United States to African countries that aren’t their home nations since the third-country program began last year, according to rights group Human Rights First, which has been monitoring the deportations. Eswatini, which is Africa’s last absolute monarchy and is ruled by a king, was paid $5.1 million by the Trump administration to take deportees, according to the agreement between the countries. Eswatini has received around 30 deportees so far.
“Years after he finished serving his sentence in the United States, the Trump administration flew him to the small southern African kingdom and handed him over to a maximum-security prison, where he was held for more than a year without ever being charged with a crime,” Nguyen said. Around a dozen African countries have accepted third-country deportees from the U.S., some in exchange for millions of dollars in payments.
The Trump administration has defended the policy as a way to quickly remove immigrants who have final deportation orders from the U.S. when their home countries might not immediately take them back. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week to temporarily allow U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to continue swiftly removing immigrants to third countries, though it will hear arguments in the case in December.
