U.S. Sends Five Detainees to Eswatini on Secret Flights

Federal immigration agents removed Roberto Mosquera, a 59-year-old Cuban-born permanent resident, and four other men from detention facilities in Miami and El Paso. After a brief stay in a luxury jet, the group was flown to Djibouti, then transferred to a military cargo plane that landed in the East African kingdom of Eswatini more than a day later. Upon arrival, the men were placed in a metal cage on a transport truck and taken to the Matsapha Correctional Complex, the nation’s maximum-security prison.

New York Times

Mosquera arrived in the United States as a child during the 1980 Mariel boatlift, later serving a prison sentence after a plea deal for attempted murder. Because Cuba has not cooperated with U.S. deportations, he was allowed to remain, provided he checked in annually. In June of the previous year, while renewing his work permit, an immigration official informed him that his authorized stay had ended. With former President Donald Trump back in office, Mosquera understood that the directive was likely to be enforced.

New York Times

The Department of Homeland Security posted on X that Mosquera and the four other detainees were “depraved monsters” whose home countries allegedly refused to accept them. The agency’s language framed the deportees as uniquely dangerous, justifying the decision to relocate them to a foreign prison rather than repatriate them to their countries of origin.

New York Times

Human-rights observers have raised questions about the legality of transferring detainees to a prison in a country with limited oversight, especially given the lack of access to legal counsel during the two-week confinement in El Paso. The episode highlights the broader challenges of U.S. immigration enforcement when destination countries are unwilling or unable to receive deportees, and it underscores the opaque nature of secret deportation operations.

New York Times