A Jamaican man deported from the United States to Eswatini in July has been held in a maximum-security prison there for nearly seven weeks without charge or legal representation, according to his attorneys.
The man, identified as 62-year-old Orville Etoria, is among at least five deportees transferred by the U.S. under a little-known “third-country” deportation program. His lawyers say the U.S. government wrongly claimed that Jamaica refused to accept him back, despite Kingston’s willingness to repatriate its citizen.
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The New York-based Legal Aid Society, which is representing Etoria, called his deportation “inexplicable.” Etoria completed his U.S. prison sentence in 2021 after being convicted of murder in 1997, yet was removed in July to Eswatini—a country with which he has no known ties.
Homeland Security announced in July that five men from Jamaica, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and Yemen had been expelled to Eswatini, describing them as “so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.” The agency did not initially identify the men by name.
Attorneys for the deportees argue the transfers amount to arbitrary detention. “Then, without warning or explanation from either the U.S. or Eswatini governments, they were arrested and sent to a country to which they have never belonged,” said lawyer Tin Thanh Nguyen, who represents two men from Laos and Vietnam.
Another lawyer, Alma David, said her Yemeni and Cuban clients have also been denied access to legal counsel. She said prison officials in Eswatini told her that only the U.S. Embassy could authorize visits—an assertion she described as troubling. “Since when does the U.S. Embassy have jurisdiction over Eswatini’s national prisons?” she asked.
All five men are reportedly being held in Eswatini’s main maximum-security prison indefinitely and at U.S. taxpayers’ expense.
The transfers highlight an expansion of the Trump administration’s secretive third-country deportation program, which has already sent migrants to at least three African nations—Eswatini, South Sudan, and Rwanda—and reportedly reached an agreement in principle with a fourth, Uganda.
Critics say the program lacks transparency and due process, effectively subjecting individuals who have completed their U.S. sentences to indefinite imprisonment abroad.
