A chartered Global Crossing Airlines flight touched down at Eswatini’s King Mswati III International Airport on the morning of July 16, carrying five passengers described by a US official in language more suited to monsters than human beings: barbaric, depraved and terrorising American communities.

The American connection to this seemingly unremarkable arrival – unheralded in the local media and unacknowledged by any official government announcement until the story broke on social media – is very strong. All five passengers – citizens of Laos, Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba and Yemen – are deportees from the US. Their removal is part of a growing trend of third-country deportations under Donald Trump’s second Presidency, where the US outsources unwanted immigrants to third countries instead of returning them to their home countries.

Often, and certainly in the case of Eswatini, the deportees are sent to countries with which they have little – if any – historical, legal or cultural ties.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the US Department of Homeland Security said the deported individuals, whose own countries had refused to take them, had been convicted of crimes such as murder, child rape and assault. When the authorities in Eswatini eventually found their voice, they said the five men were being housed in isolated units in correctional facilities, with plans to collaborate with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) to facilitate their eventual transit to their countries of origin.

Owing to the Eswatini government’s decision to deploy strategic silence, we may never know how much it’s being paid for its role in this scheme. But what is beyond doubt is that citizens and outsiders are left with many unanswered questions. For one, are we now at that juncture in history where powerful nations can outsource custody of unwanted foreign nationals to countries too weak – politically or economically – to say no? Here, I’m thinking of Eswatini’s modest financial position, with 53% of its population living below the World Bank’s lower-middle-income poverty line of $3.65 a day. Given this reality, coupled with a desire to strengthen diplomatic relations with the US, financial inducements to accept deportees would be hard to resist.

The deal with Eswatini is not the first of its kind the US has entered into since the advent of Trump 2.0. In March, 200 Venezuelans were deported away – as opposed to deported home – to El Salvador, while reports emerged in May that the US was considering sending unwanted immigrants to Libya, a move that was subsequently blocked by a federal court. Also in May, eight individuals originally from countries as varied as Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Cuba and Vietnam were bundled onto a South Sudan-bound plane, but the flight was ultimately diverted to Djibouti, following a court determination that they had not been afforded the opportunity to contest their removal from the US.

Granted, the Eswatini government spokesperson did say the men are being held pending the finalisation of processes for their transit to their countries of birth. But if those countries declined to accept them when asked by the US, what would prompt a change of heart when the request comes from the Eswatini government and the IOM? For all we know, Eswatini may end up playing host to them for a very long time, thereby risking a reputation as a convenient dumping ground for a global superpower’s legal and moral burdens.

Lest we forget: before the US, both Israel and the UK attempted to divert foreigners they did not want to Rwanda. Under a so-called voluntary departure scheme, Rwanda and neighbouring Uganda received an estimated 4 000 African deportees from Israel between 2014 and 2017, but about half of them vanished almost immediately. One of their number, tracked down by an Israeli newspaper in 2018, described being destitute and living on the streets of Kigali, the Rwandan capital.

Rwanda was paid handsomely by the then Conservative Party-led UK government to take immigrants who had arrived in Britain illegally. According to some reports, a total of $890-million had been paid to Rwanda when the scheme was stopped in its tracks upon the Labour Party’s assumption of power in July last year.