Featured Image Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
One of the smallest countries in the world is demanding a whopping $500 million from President Donald Trump.
This comes after the African nation announced that they are imprisoning five immigrants who were deported from the US.
As it seems to have been left to the country to sort it out, the nation wants money to keep them detained.
Advert
Eswatini’s government was reportedly open to detaining 150 people from other nations for over $10 million after the Trump administration began its policy of deporting immigrant detainees to so-called third countries over the summer, according to documents.
The African country was blindsided by the arrival of five detainees, according to diplomats, and revealed that they ‘will be repatriated.
The United Nations International Organization for Migration is also said to be working with Eswatini to ‘facilitate the transit of these inmates to their countries of origin’.
However, after almost two months, the men are still being detained in Eswatini.
The decision to send the men to Eswatini has proven to be controversial as Trump’s own State Department has told travelers to ‘exercise increased caution in Eswatini due to crime and civil unrest’.
Human rights have argued that this policy by the US puts people at risk.
The men in question, who are currently being detained, aren’t facing new criminal charges, which has sparked people to argue that this does not follow due process.
The country has reportedly requested half a billion dollars from the US government in order to detain the men.
And the list doesn’t end with just one country because other nations, such as Uganda and Rwanda, have also reached their own agreements with the Trump administration in order to detain deportees.
Lawyer Alma David spoke to the Guardian where she said that the men are being detained ‘illegally’.
David is representing two of the five men and has said that she is being denied proper access after revealing that she had spoken to the men while all five of the deportees were with guards and the prison chief, who shared that only the US embassy in Eswatini could grant access to them.
She said: “Since when does the US embassy have jurisdiction over Eswatini’s national prisons?”
Tin Thanh Nguyen, who is representing two other deportees, has said that one of the men’s relatives have reported that he is beginning to show signs of depression.
Nguyen added: “The United States is outsourcing their detention … to purge the United States of immigrants and refugees and to make a spectacle of deportations.”
