A 43-year-old Cambodian man says he was sent to a prison in Eswatini by the US for more than five months.
When Peep Lom saw “Eswatini” written on his documents last fall, he thought he might be transferred to another detention center.
Instead, the 43-year-old Cambodian refugee was put on a plane to a small African kingdom and held for months in a high-security prison, where he had no legal status, no charges, and little ability to challenge his confinement.
With that incarceration, Rom joins a growing number of immigrants caught up in broader changes in U.S. deportation policy. Last year, the Trump administration dramatically expanded the little-known tactic of sending migrants to countries with which they have no ties. Critics say it outsources detention to foreign governments, many with records of human rights abuses, minimal oversight and unclear legal protections.
Deportees like Rom are being held in hotels, shelters and prisons in more than 20 countries under a deal brokered by the United States during President Donald Trump’s second term.
“They’re just being snatched, put on planes and sent to these countries,” Lom told USA TODAY by video call from Cambodia, where she has lived since late March, after spending more than five months in a prison in Eswatini. Rom is the second person to be released from Eswatini’s Matsafa Correctional Center, which houses at least 19 people deported from the United States.
After serving time in Pennsylvania, where Lom was serving a 15-year sentence for attempted murder, federal authorities took him to several immigration detention centers over a period of nearly 11 months. Because of his conviction, Lom believed he would likely be deported to Cambodia. Lom was born in a refugee camp in neighboring Thailand, where her family had fled genocide.
The Trump administration had other plans when it flew him and nine others from Louisiana to Eswatini on October 4.
Lawyers are fighting over where he should be sent.
Rom entered the United States as a 3-year-old refugee in 1985 and received a green card in 1987. In 2009, he was convicted of attempted murder, aggravated assault, and illegal possession of a firearm. His lawyer, Tinh Thanh Nguyen, said the incident arose out of self-defense after a group of men tried to shoot him and he fired back.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a separate statement that Lom underwent due process and was initially transferred to Thailand, where he does not have citizenship. After USA TODAY sent federal authorities evidence provided by Lom and Nguyen about their detention in Eswatini and return to Cambodia, DHS sent a second statement saying Lom was sent to Eswatini.
Federal records show an immigration judge ordered Rom’s removal in 2010.
“We are applying the law to the letter,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. “If a judge decides that illegal aliens have no right to be in this country, we will remove them.”
The United States has long deported immigrants without legal status who have been convicted of crimes. U.S. authorities typically contact the person’s country of origin to facilitate their expulsion.
Human rights group criticizes ‘enforced disappearances’ by US
Prior to President Trump’s second term, people could be deported based on their immigration status without being imprisoned by another country.
U.S. law does not prohibit sending people to other countries, but immigration authorities rarely do so, said Dara Lind, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, an immigrant rights advocacy group. This often only occurred when someone could not be repatriated to a particular home country, such as Cuba, due to strained relations with the United States.
Nguyen said the federal government had not contacted Cambodia to facilitate Lom’s transfer to Eswatini, Africa’s only absolute monarchy, which is home to about 1.1 million people. Cambodia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs previously told Agence France-Presse AFP that it was unclear why Lom was held in Eswatini prison, as it accepts deportees from the United States. Cambodia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Since January 2025, the Trump administration has concluded third-country migration agreements with at least 27 countries, mainly in Africa and Latin America, according to the American think tank Migration Policy Institute.
In response to emailed questions about the agreement, the State Department declined to comment on the details of the diplomatic exchange. The State Department said in a statement that implementing President Trump’s immigration policies is its top priority.
Lind said the agreement was in uncharted territory, with no clear rights for deportees or a legal or criminal framework to preserve them. Agreements made public in court battles and public records requests by countries such as El Salvador, Rwanda and Eswatini include language guaranteeing that countries abide by international law against refugee protection and torture.
Human Rights Watch, a New York-based nonprofit watchdog, said in September that displacement agreements with African countries put hundreds of people at risk of forced relocation of refugees and asylum seekers to countries where they are likely to face arbitrary detention, abuse and persecution.
“The United States is carrying out enforced disappearances,” said Nicole Wadersheim, Washington deputy director at Human Rights Watch, calling the practice a human rights violation. “They would say the onus is on the United States to find the people it deports, and it’s on the host country to find them.”
The administration’s policy began with a $4.76 million deal with El Salvador that saw nearly 250 Venezuelan men, most of them asylum seekers with no criminal records, sent by military plane to the notorious mega-prison in March 2025. Some allege that torture and sexual assault took place inside the prison, known as a terrorist confinement center.
The U.S. has also sanctioned some countries it currently entrusts to detain deportees, including the Central African nation of Rwanda, whose military officials were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in March. Despite this, Rwanda maintains a $7.5 million deal with the United States to house up to 250 people. As of January, at least seven people had been sent to Rwanda, at an estimated cost of about $1.1 million per detainee.
Moving to a third country is expensive
The Trump administration has not released an official tally of those deported or the total cost of federal programs. But Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released a report in February estimating the program included about 300 immigrants as of Jan. 31 and cost more than $40 million.
“The administration’s expulsion agreements are wasteful, cruel and endanger America’s credibility abroad,” Shaheen said in a statement to USA TODAY.
George Fishman, a former Homeland Security official in the first Trump administration and a senior fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for stricter immigration policies, said deportations from third countries can be used to instill fear in immigrants without legal status of what will happen if they remain in the U.S., which could motivate them to leave the country themselves.
He said the practice puts people in legal incapacity and inhospitable situations and gives the United States leverage to force countries to accept immigrants.
“If we don’t enter into one of these agreements, things may happen that we don’t like,” Fishman said.
A memorandum of understanding with Eswatini signed in May 2025 allows the United States to send up to 160 personnel to Eswatini under a $5.1 million agreement. However, only 19 detainees are known, and the cost is more than $413,000 per detainee, according to Shaheen’s report. Lom, who lives in Pennsylvania with a mother in her 70s and a daughter in college, wonders if Americans know the price they paid to keep people like her in custody indefinitely and without any criminal charges.
In Eswatini, Rom said prisons were riddled with mold and infested with insects, especially mosquitoes. He said prison guards listened in on detainees’ phone calls, but the calls were limited to 10 minutes, about once a week. In early April, deportees from Eswatini won a high court case seeking access to local lawyers in the country.
Only one other Jamaican man has been released from an Eswatini prison. In July, Jamaican Foreign Minister Kamina Johnson-Smith said on the
The practice is akin to human trafficking, said Nguyen, who also represents third-country detainees in South Sudan, which is on the brink of civil war. About eight migrants, including nationals from Laos, Vietnam and Mexico, were initially deported to South Sudan, where Nguyen said he has not been able to contact his clients.
“I’m worried that we will set a precedent for detaining other people overseas in the future,” Nguyen said.
In February, a federal judge in Massachusetts appointed by former President Joe Biden ruled that the administration’s third-country exclusion policy was illegal. However, the First Circuit Court of Appeals in March granted the government’s request to suspend the Massachusetts ruling so the court could consider an expedited appeal.
In mid-April, the Democratic Republic of the Congo became the latest African country to accept people despite experiencing armed conflict. About 15 migrants, mostly from Latin America, are being held in a hotel in Kinshasa. Details of the agreement have not been made public, but lawyers say an immigration judge has ordered the Congolese detainees from being deported after finding they are likely to face persecution in their home country if deported.
Deportees are left with only ‘bad options’
Alma David, a US-based lawyer, is representing one person detained in Congo, as well as others in Cameroon. In Cameroon, more than a dozen people are being housed in dormitory-style evacuation centers. She also represents deportees from Eswatini, including men from Yemen, Haiti, Cuba, and another stateless man.
David said there appears to be a pattern she calls “ex-hemispheric exile.” For example, she said, U.S. authorities tend to place Latin Americans in Africa, while people from African countries are often sent to Costa Rica in Central America.
David added that the practice forces people to withdraw their immigration protection claims, including asylum claims, leaving people with “bad options.”
“Perhaps choosing the familiar bad is a better option than the unfamiliar bad,” she says.
Lomu was left with no other options before he was imprisoned again, this time in Eswatini. Through his lawyer, he was able to contact Cambodian officials who facilitated a trip to the capital, Phnom Penh. He arrived on March 26, more than five months after he said he was forced onto a plane from the United States.
When I arrived in Cambodia, I remembered asking my friend for permission to leave the house. He didn’t go outside for days.
Instead, he said he was going to look out the window, afraid to leave to start a new life in another country he had never been to.
USA TODAY’s Lauren Villagran contributed to this report.
Eduardo Cuevas is based in New York City. Contact us via email (emcuevas1@usatoday.com) or Signal (emcuevas.01).
