CAPE TOWN – A Laotian man deported by the United States to Eswatini under the Trump administration’s immigration policy was released Sunday from a maximum-security prison, where he had been held for more than a year, his lawyer said.
Phone Chomsavanh was one of five immigrants sent to Eswatini in July 2025, during the early phase of the Trump administration’s secretive and controversial program of deporting people to third countries with which they have no connection.
His U.S.-based attorney, Tin Thanh Nguyen, said Chomsavanh was told only shortly before a military cargo plane arrived in Eswatini that he would be sent to the southern African kingdom. The flight carrying him and the other deportees landed there more than 14 months ago.
Nguyen said Chomsavanh was being deported onward to Laos.
Chomsavanh and the four other people transferred to Eswatini had been convicted of serious crimes in the United States. However, all had completed their sentences before being taken to the Matsapha Correctional Complex near Mbabane, Eswatini’s administrative capital.
“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.
In separate messages to The Associated Press, Nguyen said Chomsavanh had departed Eswatini and arrived in Johannesburg while traveling onward to Laos.
An Eswatini government spokesperson did not immediately confirm the release.
Chomsavanh was born in a refugee camp in Thailand after his parents fled Laos. His family later moved to the United States when he was 7, according to Nguyen.
Human Rights First, which tracks the transfers, estimates that about 500 immigrants have been deported from the United States to African countries that are not their countries of origin since the third-country program began last year.
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About a dozen African nations have accepted deportees from the United States, with some receiving millions of dollars in return. Under its agreement with Washington, Eswatini was paid $5.1 million by the Trump administration and has taken in roughly 30 deportees. The country is Africa’s last absolute monarchy and is ruled by a king.
Rights organizations and attorneys have sharply condemned the program, which places immigrants in countries where they have no established ties and where they have not been charged with crimes. The policy has prompted legal challenges in the United States and in several recipient countries.
The Trump administration has defended the arrangement as a way to quickly remove immigrants with final deportation orders when their home countries may not immediately agree to accept them.
A U.S. appeals court last month upheld a judge’s decision to suspend the program, finding that immigrants facing removal were not given enough time to contest deportation to a third country on grounds that they could face persecution or torture there.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that the Trump administration could temporarily continue sending immigrants to third countries while the case proceeds. The justices are scheduled to hear arguments in December.
Much of the program has unfolded behind closed doors, leaving limited public information about how many immigrants have been transferred, which countries received them and the conditions in which they are being detained.
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