The Only Court That Ruled for a Deportee Sits in Eswatini

In April, Eswatini's supreme court ordered the government to let four men see a lawyer. The men — from Cuba, Yemen, Laos, and Vietnam — had spent nine months in a maximum-security prison with no charges and no counsel ^[1]. Across sixteen months of American third-country removals — flying deportees to nations that are not their own, whether or not they have any connection to them — no American court has changed a removed person's conditions. The one court that has sits in Mbabane. The reason begins before any plane leaves. The protections that could have put the people on these planes before a U.S. judge were removed on this side of the ocean first. In July 2025 the administration ended Temporary Protected Status — the shield that lets people stay when their home country is unsafe — for more than 11,000 Afghans, with Secretary Kristi Noem claiming Afghanistan's security situation had improved and its stabilizing economy no longer kept people from returning home ^[2]. By December, ICE lawyers had filed more than 8,000 motions asking judges to dismiss asylum cases without a merit hearing, telling applicants they could seek protection in Guatemala, Honduras, Ecuador, Uganda, or Palau — countries they had never seen ^[3]. Then the Supreme Court narrowed what appeals could do. In March, a unanimous Court held that federal appeals judges must accept an immigration judge's finding that a person would not face persecution unless no reasonable adjudicator could disagree — deference that makes the federal courts a much weaker place to stop a removal ^[4]. In May, a 6-3 majority let the administration end Temporary Protected Status for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, accepting the argument that the statute bars judicial review — the power of courts to second-guess the secretary's decision — altogether ^[5]. The administration has not hidden why. Its stated aim is throughput: DHS says it is using every tool available to remove people and will keep enforcing the law at full speed, without apology. This month it added the newest domestic rung, a policy that removed more than 16,000 names from the Online Detainee Locator System — the public database lawyers use to find detained clients — a change the suit says was made to speed removals, and one that keeps lawyers from finding anyone to challenge anything at all ^[6]. When legal groups demanded more than secrecy for people with final removal orders, DHS had a one-sentence answer.

The appropriate process due to an illegal alien with final deportation orders is removal, plain and simple. — U.S. Department of Homeland Security

That leaves one stretch where an American court can still act: the flight window. And they did act. In February a Boston judge ruled the government had violated the Fifth Amendment by sending people to third countries without notice, and the appeals court declined to lift his injunction; a Minnesota judge separately blocked the detention of refugees under Operation PARRIS ^[7]. In late February, Judge Murphy ordered that anyone facing third-country removal be given notice and a chance to raise torture claims ^[7]. But watch what happened to the orders that governed the flights. Murphy's order was stayed "hours before" it was to take effect on March 11, and reversed the next day ^[8]. The injunction requiring home-country-first removal was overturned 2-1, and removals to Cameroon, South Sudan, and Eswatini resumed while the merits were still being briefed ^[9]. The government's objection was the same in each case, and DOJ put it in writing.

The district court’s order creates an unworkable scheme that materially impairs the ability of the government to enforce the immigration laws. — United States Department of Justice

Against Murphy's notice order it used the same word — an "unworkable scheme" that would threaten sensitive international negotiations and thousands of planned deportations ^[8]. The district judge who first blocked the flights had asked the most basic questions about the "diplomatic assurances" the government claimed to hold from receiving countries ^[10].

Whom do they cover? What do they cover? Why has the Government deemed them credible? How can anyone even know for certain that they exist? These are basic questions that the Constitution permits a person to ask before the Government takes away their last and only lifeline. — Brian Doyle-Murray

The landing is where the question crosses a border, and the person crosses out of any American courtroom's reach. In September 2025, fourteen West Africans were flown to a military base in Ghana. When eleven of them sued over detention in "terrible conditions," Ghana repatriated them over a single weekend — a move their lawyers called a ruse to kill the case ^[11]. When a federal judge, Tanya Chutkan, examined what she could still do for people in Ghanaian custody, she concluded the answer was nothing: once the plane lands and the receiving state holds the person, U.S. jurisdiction is gone ^[11]. Even the strongest American court orders meet the same crossing. Farah, a 21-year-old gay Moroccan, held an immigration judge's order that returning to Morocco would be life-threatening. ICE flew her to Cameroon — where homosexuality is also criminalized — and she was eventually forced back to Morocco, where she remains in hiding, with no new hearing ever held ^[12]. In June, a flight to the Central African Republic carried people who had already won withholding of removal — a court-ordered protection barring return to a country where they would face torture or persecution — including an Iranian pro-democracy activist and a Christian convert; sending them to a third country stepped around protections an American judge had issued ^[13]. Which brings the question back to Mbabane. Where a deportee can still get a hearing is now a map, not a guarantee, and the map rests on fragile ground. Roughly $40 million has moved about 300 people ^[12]. Receiving governments publicly deny the deals exist — South Sudan called its July arrival a one-time arrangement — and Eswatini's own courts are hearing a challenge to nullify the agreement outright ^[14]. It took nine months and that country's supreme court just to get four men a lawyer ^[1]. The newest rung is being removed at home this week, the 16,000 names scrubbed from the detainee locator ^[6], and the routing is now reaching people once thought untouchable: the administration is preparing to send Afghan deportees through Pakistan, which will push them across the border into Afghanistan, a route chosen because Washington has no diplomatic relations with the Taliban government ^[15]. A Cuban man flown to the Central African Republic in July said he was not told his destination until he landed ^[16]. The passengers on the next flight will learn where they are the same way — as the plane touches down, in a country whose courts are now the only ones left that can hear them.