Mbabane (Somalia Today) — Eswatini said Thursday it had received four more people deported from the United States under a controversial third-country arrangement, including two Somalis, in a move likely to stoke concern among Somalis facing tighter US immigration policy.
The group also included one Sudanese and one Tanzanian, bringing the number of deportees sent from the US to the southern African kingdom to at least 19.
The latest transfer puts Somali nationals at the centre of a policy drawing growing scrutiny from rights groups and lawyers in Eswatini, where authorities are holding deportees while they try to arrange their onward return.
Amnesty International said the four men arrived on March 11 and were being held at the Matsapha Correctional Complex, a maximum-security prison near the country’s international airport.
Eswatini said it carried out the removals under an agreement with Washington and that “intensive engagements” with the countries of origin were underway.
The deal has become one of the clearest examples of the Trump administration’s use of third countries to hold or process people expelled from the United States but not immediately returned to their homelands.
Eswatini received $5.1 million under the arrangement, while earlier deportees sent there included nationals of Vietnam, Cuba, Laos, and Yemen.
TPS deadline approaches
For Somalis, the timing is especially sensitive.
The Trump administration is due to terminate Somalia’s Temporary Protected Status designation at 11:59 p.m. local time on March 17, 2026.
The move will end a programme that has allowed Somali nationals in the United States to live and work legally on humanitarian grounds for decades.
The official termination notice said there were 1,082 approved Somali TPS beneficiaries and 1,383 pending applications as of December 8, 2025.
Washington argues that Somalia no longer meets the statutory conditions for TPS.
But the decision has alarmed Somali communities and immigrant rights groups, who say the country remains far too unstable for safe return.
A lawsuit filed this week by four Somali nationals and two advocacy organisations seeks to block the termination, arguing that the administration’s decision was procedurally flawed and tainted by discriminatory bias.
The case challenges the ending of protections for roughly 1,100 Somalis.
The United States first granted TPS for Somalia in 1991 after the collapse of the central government and the country’s descent into civil war.
More than three decades later, Somalia is still grappling with insecurity, armed conflict, and displacement, even as US officials argue that conditions have improved enough to justify ending the programme.
US policy itself reflects that tension: while the Department of Homeland Security has moved to end TPS, the State Department continues to warn Americans not to travel to Somalia because of crime, terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping, and limited consular services.
Deal draws scrutiny
In Eswatini, the deportation arrangement has sparked legal and political backlash. Local human rights lawyers challenged the agreement in court, arguing that it was secretive and unlawful, but the High Court dismissed the case last month.
The ruling allowed the programme to continue, though the controversy has not faded.
Eswatini is one of at least seven African countries to have entered deportation arrangements with Washington.
For critics, the transfer of two Somali deportees to Eswatini shows how the administration’s immigration crackdown is stretching beyond direct removals to countries of origin and into a network of opaque third-country deals.
Despite completing criminal sentences in the United States, some earlier deportees remain in custody in Eswatini while officials negotiate with their home countries.
The fate of the two Somali men is not yet clear. But their arrival in Eswatini, just days before US protections for Somalis are due to expire, underscores the uncertainty now facing a community that has relied on TPS for more than three decades.
