CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — A Cambodian man deported by the United States to the African kingdom of Eswatini under the Trump administration’s third-country program was released on Wednesday to be repatriated after spending five months at a maximum-security prison with other deportees, his lawyer said.
Pheap Rom was deported to the southern African nation in October and held at the Matsapha Correctional Center. He was due to take a commercial flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, to start his journey to Cambodia, his U.S.-based lawyer, Tin Thanh Nguyen, told The Associated Press.
The U.S. has sent 19 migrants from other countries to Eswatini in three batches since July. Rom is the second to be repatriated after a Jamaican man was flown home in September.
U.S. President Donald Trump has taken a hard-line stance on immigration and the U.S. has deported around 300 migrants to countries they have no ties with under the third-country program, which lawyers have criticized as unlawful.
The U.S. has struck deals with at least seven African nations to take some of those migrants. The U.S. paid Eswatini $5.1 million to take up to 160 deportees, according to details of the deal released by the U.S. State Department. While Eswatini's government has previously said the migrants are in "transit" there on their way home, the deal allows them to be held in Eswatini for up to a year.
Rom served a 15-year prison sentence in the U.S. for attempted murder and was released in late 2024, Nguyen said, adding in a statement that Rom was illegally held at the prison in Eswatini for five months because he faced no criminal charges in the African country.
"Rom’s release proves what we have argued from the beginning. These third-country deportations are unnecessary and unlawful,” Nguyen said.
The thorny issue of third-country deportations
The U.S. State Department and the Department of Homeland Security have defended third-country deportations as a means to quickly remove people who are in the U.S. illegally. Many of the deportees sent to Eswatini were convicted of serious crimes and had completed their sentences in the U.S.
But lawyers say sending migrants to countries they have no ties with is a tactic by the administration to bypass U.S. immigration laws and denies the deportees their rights. Third-country deportations have been the subject of several legal cases, both in the U.S. and in some countries where migrants are sent.
Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to go ahead with third-country deportations. Last month, a U.S. federal judge ruled that the policy was unlawful because it didn't give migrants notice of where they were being sent or an opportunity to challenge their deportations. An appeals court lifted that order this month.
The deportations have been the subject of two legal challenges in Eswatini, which is ruled by a king and is one of the last absolute monarchies in the world. An Eswatini lawyer acting on behalf of deportees being held at the Matsapha prison — where Rom was also held — says he has been denied access to them and has sued the government.
In a separate case, advocacy groups have challenged the legality of Eswatini holding foreign nationals for months in a prison when they have not been charged with any crimes in the African country.
Critics have also questioned the Trump administration's choice of African countries to strike deportation deals with and pay money to, including nations with notoriously repressive governments and sketchy human rights records — such as Eswatini, South Sudan and Equatorial Guinea.
Eswatini's King Mswati III has long been accused of clamping down on pro-democracy movements, sometimes violently.
The U.S. has sent more than two dozen deportees to Equatorial Guinea, a small, authoritarian state in West Africa ruled by the same president since 1979 and where the government is accused of being one of the most corrupt in the world.
Democrats in the U.S. have questioned the Trump administration over a $7.5 million payment it made to the government of Equatorial Guinea.
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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa
