The United States ruling class paid the African nation of Eswatini $5.1 million to accept migrants who were deported. This is a controversial agreement in which at least 15 migrants have been sent to Eswatini since the bilateral deal went into effect in May.
The fifteen migrants deported to Eswatini have no ties to Africa at all. Finance Minister Neal Rijkenberg told lawmakers on Monday that the funds formed part of a bilateral agreement signed back in May. In September, the non-profit group Human Rights Watch reported that the Eswatini government had agreed to accept up to 160 “third-country nationals” expelled by the U.S. and to use the money to “build border and migration management capacity.”
Rijkenberg said the Finance Ministry had been kept in the dark throughout the process, The Guardian reported. “We were told it was for the US deportees after we enquired,” he said, according to the outlet, at a parliamentary questioning.
The minister also told Reuters on Tuesday that the transaction was handled by the prime minister’s office and that he was only informed about it after the fact.
U.S. President Donald Trump has pursued controversial agreements with several African states to host migrants that Washington deems ineligible to remain in the U.S.
Equatorial Guinea has also received $7.5 million from the Trump administration to accept non-citizens removed from the US, according to Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen. South Sudan, Ghana, Rwanda, and Uganda have all agreed to deals to host a number of deportees, according to a report by RT.
In July, the US Department of Homeland Security deported five men from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Cuba, and Yemen, all convicted of crimes ranging from child rape to murder, to Eswatini, Africa’s last absolute monarchy. Ten more people were reportedly sent there last month, even as the Eswatini government faces a lawsuit from human rights lawyers who argue that the “secretive” deal is unconstitutional. –RT
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The government of neighboring South Africa has also criticized the strange arrangement, warning that the deportees, who U.S. officials have described as “barbaric criminals,” could easily cross the countries’ porous border into South Africa.
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