MANZINI, Eswatini AP - Five immigrants deported by the United States to Eswatini in a secret deal last month had served their criminal sentences before they were sent to be held in a prison in the African country, a lawyer working on their cases said Friday.
The Eswatini lawyer also said the men from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Yemen and Vietnam sent to southern Africa under President Donald Trump's third-country deportation program have been denied access to legal representation while being held in Eswatini's main maximum-security prison.
The lawyer, Sibusiso Nhlabatsi, said he hasn't been allowed to see the men and that he filed court papers Thursday against the head of Eswatini's correctional services department and the country's attorney general, demanding access to them.
He said he is representing them on behalf of lawyers in the U.S. and was prevented from seeing them by Eswatini prison officials on July 25. It's unlawful for the men, who have been in Eswatini for around two weeks, to be denied access to a lawyer, he added.
The Eswatini government has said the men will be held in solitary confinement until they can be deported to their home countries, which could take up to a year.