US President Donald Trump
The Associated Press is reporting that three men, including Jamaican Orville Etoria, 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, and with no access to legal counsel despite completing criminal sentences in the United States.
This was revealed in an interview with their lawyers Tuesday.
The New York-based Legal Aid Society said it was representing Etoria and that he had been inexplicably sent to Eswatini when his home country was willing to accept him.
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.
The deportations are part of the Trump administration's largely secretive third-country programme to crack down on immigration.
The Legal Aid Society said the 62-year-old Etoria was convicted of a serious crime in the US in 1997 and was released from prison on parole in 2021.
The US Department of Homeland Security said in a post on X that Etoria had been convicted of murder.
The Legal Aid Society said the US government had falsely claimed that Jamaica refused to accept him back.
Homeland Security, when announcing the deportation of five men to Eswatini in mid-July, claimed that they were "so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back".
It said the men were dangerous criminals from Jamaica, Cuba, Vietnam and Yemen, but did not identify them by name.
comments powered by Disqus
All feeds
