CAPE TOWN, South Africa — The Supreme Court in the African kingdom of Eswatini has ruled that four men sent there by the United States last July under the Trump administration’s third-country deportation program can finally meet with a lawyer after they were denied in-person legal counsel for nine months while held at a maximum-security prison.
A lower court had previously ruled that local lawyer Sibusiso Nhlabatsi, who is working on behalf of the men’s U.S.-based lawyers, could meet with them, but the Eswatini government immediately appealed that decision.
In a ruling delivered on Thursday, the Supreme Court dismissed arguments by Eswatini authorities that the deportees didn’t want to meet with Nhlabatsi, and that they had no right to legal counsel anyway because they had not been arrested or charged with a crime in Eswatini.
Eswatini is ruled by a king as Africa’s last absolute monarchy, and authorities have been accused of clamping down on pro-democracy movements, sometimes violently.
U.S.-based lawyer Alma David of Novo Legal Group, who represents two of the four deported men, said in a statement Friday that the fact that it took nine months of litigation to allow the men to meet with a lawyer “speaks volumes about how hard the government of Eswatini is fighting to deny these men the most basic of rights.”
The four men from Cuba, Yemen, Laos and Vietnam have been allowed to speak by phone with their U.S.-based lawyers.
Eswatini is one of at least eight African nations to have struck deals with the U.S. government to take deported migrants who are originally from other countries. The Trump administration has used the program in its immigration crackdown as a means of quickly removing migrants who are in the U.S. illegally and who can’t easily be sent to their home countries.
Critics have said the program allows the deportees’ legal rights to be violated in countries that have questionable rights records and where the deportees have no ties.
U.S. authorities have insisted they followed due process with the deportations but have largely handed over responsibility for the treatment of the deportees to the countries receiving them.
A spokesperson for the Eswatini government said she couldn’t immediately comment on the Supreme Court ruling.
The four men sent to Eswatini were convicted of serious crimes in the U.S. and had deportation orders, the U.S. government has said. Their lawyers say they completed their prison sentences in the U.S. and their detention at Eswatini’s maximum-security Matsapha Correctional Complex is illegal because they have not been charged with any crime in the African nation.
The U.S. agreed to pay Eswatini’s government $5.1 million to take deportees, according to documents released by the U.S. State Department. Eswatini has received at least 19 deportees from the U.S. in separate batches since July and said it could hold them in prison for up to a year. Two of them have been repatriated to their home countries.
The seven other African nations known to have agreed deals to take deported migrants are South Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, Ghana, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Congo.
Details of only some of the deals have been published by the State Department, including that the U.S. would pay Rwanda $7.5 million. South Sudan’s government asked the U.S. to drop sanctions against a senior official accused of corruption and help it prosecute an opposition leader in return for taking deportees, according to documents related to that deal. There is no indication the U.S. considered those requests.
Senate Democrats have questioned a $7.5 million payment made to Equatorial Guinea, where the president and his family are accused of systemic corruption, embezzlement and repression. Many elements of the deals have been cloaked in secrecy, including where some of the deportees sent to Africa are being held and how long they will be detained.
A report in February by Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the Trump administration had spent at least $40 million to deport roughly 300 migrants to countries other than their own, including in Africa, Central America and elsewhere.
At the time, internal documents reviewed by The Associated Press showed 47 deportation deals between the U.S. and third countries had been agreed or were being negotiated.
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AP writer Nokukhanya Musi in Manzini, Eswatini, contributed to this report.
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