Most Americans couldn’t point to Eswatini on a map—let alone spell it without autocorrect. But thanks to President Donald Trump, this tiny African kingdom has suddenly found itself on the receiving end of U.S. deportation policy.
In a move that would feel more at home in a dystopian novel than a democratic nation, Trump’s administration has begun deporting so-called “unreturnable” migrants to Eswatini, a country few Americans (or even members of the Eswatini government) seem to know much about. But here’s the catch: Eswatini is an absolute monarchy ruled by King Mswati III—an autocrat with a penchant for Rolls-Royces and repression.
In July 2025, five migrants—from Vietnam, Cuba, Yemen, Jamaica, and Laos—were shipped off to Eswatini, after their home countries refused to accept them. With a freshly minted U.S. Supreme Court decision blessing the practice of deporting migrants to “safe third countries,” the Trump team wasted no time executing what they’re calling a lawful and efficient immigration solution.
Let’s pause here.
We are no longer deporting people back to their countries of origin. We are now deporting them to whatever country is willing to accept a check and a diplomatic shrug. In this case: a kingdom known for police brutality, violent crackdowns on dissent, torture, and the banning of political parties. Sounds like just the place to send someone fleeing persecution, right?
This isn’t policy. This is a warning shot from a man who’s always danced on the edge of authoritarianism—and is now rewriting the rules of deportation with the same flair he once reserved for Twitter tirades and reality TV catchphrases. Only this time, it’s not just talk. Real people are being dropped in real danger, without a hearing, without due process, and often without a plan for what comes next.
What’s more terrifying than this absurdity is the precedent it sets. Under the current legal framework, any country that agrees to receive deportees—even one that’s clearly unsafe—can be designated as “acceptable.” Eswatini just happened to say yes. Tomorrow, it could be South Sudan, Libya, or Belarus.
And don’t be fooled—this isn’t a clever workaround. This is outsourcing human rights violations. A form of rendition dressed up in bureaucratic language and Supreme Court footnotes.
Worse still, Eswatini itself appears blindsided. Reports suggest that government officials were “embarrassingly unaware” of the arrangement until it was already public. Imagine learning your country has become a holding pen for deportees… from the internet.
This move is not only ethically grotesque, it’s geopolitically reckless. Trump is building a network of transactional deportation partners with regimes that have little regard for civil liberties. We’ve gone from “build the wall” to “export the problem to dictatorships”—and somehow convinced the courts to greenlight it.
King Mswati III, who lives in a palace while his people survive on less than $4 a day, has long ruled Eswatini with a tight grip. Political parties are banned. Dissent is met with bullets. A recent wave of pro-democracy protests was crushed violently. This is who Trump is entrusting with the lives of migrants? A man who runs a kingdom like it’s a feudal estate?
Let’s call this what it is: authoritarian outsourcing.
And while the tone may verge on the absurd—“Trump sends migrants to Eswatini” sounds like a headline from The Onion—the consequences are deeply real. These deportees are not criminals. They are people who, for various reasons, cannot return home. And now, they’re being shipped across the world to a country that barely registers in the American consciousness, let alone the State Department’s human rights reports.
The message is clear: Trump doesn’t care where people go, as long as they’re gone.
This is not just a legal loophole. It’s the creeping normalisation of cruelty. The kind that makes you laugh until you realise the punchline involves a prison cell in a country you’ve never heard of. If this is what immigration policy looks like under Trump 2.0, we may all need to start learning how to spell Eswatini—and how to resist turning democracies into autocracies, one deportation at a time.
