Helpless Deportees Taken From U.S. to Despot’s African Nation
The U.S. has secretly spirited deportees away to a small, poor African kingdom with links to the trump administration, a nation where officials are suspected of money laundering and political dissent is quickly crushed by one of the world’s last absolute monarchies.
The group was deported to Eswatini, a nation of 1.2 million people and formerly known as Swaziland that is located between South Africa and Mozambique. King Mswati III unilaterally changed the country’s name to Eswatini, in 2018. Mswati III, crowned in 1986, has effectively banned political parties and pro-democracy groups have been crushed, sometimes violently.
Few details have been released, including why the deportees were exiled to Eswatini, how many were deported and how much the U.S. paid King Mswati III. The U.S. has paid other countries millions of dollars to accept people deported by the U.S.
Pro-democracy protests erupted in Eswatini in 2021, when dozens were killed, allegedly by security forces. Eswatini authorities have been accused of conducting political assassinations of pro-democracy activists and imprisoning others.
Most of Eswatini’s population are extremely poor, with a national economy that is smaller than Fiji’s. But King Mswati III and his 11 wives, including one as young as 17, and more than 30 children are known to live lavishly.
The king has a collection of custom made watches worth millions of dollars, and a fleet of luxury cars and jets. In the 2014 national budget, parliament allocated $61 million for the King’s annual household budget, while 63 percent of Swazis live on less than $1.25 per day. Mswati banned photography of his automobiles after he was criticized for purchasing luxury cars, such as a $500,000 DaimlerChrysler Maybach 62. In January 2004 the Times of Swaziland reported that the king asked his government to spend about $15 million to redecorate three main palaces and build others for each of his 13 wives.
Nearly 60 percent of citizens under age 25 are out of work. The country’s life expectancy in 2021 was 53 years for men and 61 for women. Life expectancy is among the lowest in the world and has been driven by the world’s highest prevalence of HIV among adults, with around 26 percent of the adult population living with the virus.
Mswati’s regime has been accused of using torture and excessive force to control the masses as well as discriminating against dissenting groups. His regime has been accused of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, detentions, and unwarranted searches and seizures of homes and property.
The government has restricted freedom of speech, assembly and association, and has harassed activists and journalists. Officials have targeted the LGBT community, labor leaders, and activists against child labor, among other groups.
Mswati has been accused of kidnapping women he desires to marry. Amnesty International said the royal family has followed a long-standing pattern of discrimination against women. Under Swazi law, Mswati can marry as often as he pleases. His father, King Sobuza II, who died in 1982, had more than 100 wives.
As an absolute monarch, the king can dissolve parties and veto any legislation parliament passes.
Swaziland won independence in 1968 from Great Britain, which left it with a democratic constitution establishing a constitutional monarchy and a bill of rights. But in 1973, a year after the pro-royalist ruling party won elections, King Sobuza repealed the constitution.
Eswatini needs the U.S. It is the United States’ 173rd largest goods trading partner with $82 million in total (exports plus imports) goods trade during 2013. Goods exports totaled $23 million; goods imports totaled $59 million.
The top export categories for 2013 were: Oils/Perfumery ($4 million), Machinery ($3 million), Chemical Products ($2 million), Special Class Products ($2 million), Electric Machinery ($2 million), and Works of Art ($1 million).
Alleged Corruption
Leaked files obtained in 2024 by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists show how a Dubai-based gold trader sucked up to the Eswanti king’s son-in-law to allegedly launder money from South Africa to Dubai through the tiny African kingdom.
Leaked documents from the Eswatini Financial Intelligence Unit reveal how, in late 2018, the kingdom’s authorities began secretly investigating suspicious payments amounting to tens of millions of rands between entities linked to two politically connected businessmen for a so-called special economic zone or SEX, the brainchild of King Mswati III. The SEZ was meant to stimulate new business but the property was never developed. Al Jazeera reported that it was home to shell refineries that were actually channeling millions of dollars to Dubai.
The investigation pointed out the relationship between Keenin Schofield, son-in-law of King Mswati III, and a Dubai-based businessman, Alistair Mathias, who claimed to be a close friend of the king. Mathias was accused in a 2023 Al Jazeera documentary of being one of the architects behind a vast scheme to smuggle gold out of Zimbabwe, allegedly with the complicity of the Mnangagwa regime.
Schofield, a jeweler, grew up in Swaziland and South Africa and sells high-end watches and custom-made jewelry to global elites and wealthy celebrities. Mathias’ family moved from Canada to Dubai in the 1970s. Mathias said he began his own career in banking and private equity before moving into the gold trade and construction.
The leaks reveal how millions of rands emanating from a Johannesburg company named AMFS moved rapidly through entities controlled by Schofield and Mathias before ultimately being transferred to Dubai. Suspicions grew within Eswatini’s authorities that the pair “might be using the country as a conduit for smuggling illegally obtained Gold out of Africa through Eswatini to the United Arab Emirates under the guise of a company,” and that this was being done to “conceal the true source and purpose of the funds received and transferred”, according to a letter the EFIU wrote to the country’s tax authority.
Angel Hails King
In 2023, a controversial preacher from Zimbabwe by the name of Uebert Angel praised King Mswati III as a “champion of human rights.” Angel also suggested that the media had unfairly depicted the king as a cruel autocrat.
Angel, who is Zimbabwe’s Presidential Envoy and Ambassador at Large for Europe and the Americas, is the founder and leader of The Good News Church, formerly Spirit Embassy. The Good News church has 66 churches around the world, including three in the U.S. in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Ga., and New York City.
Angel has been implicated in corrupt activities after he allegedly offered to use his diplomatic privileges to carry more than $1 billion of dirty cash into the country while speaking to Al Jazeera undercover journalists. Angel’s alleged involvement in money laundering was revealed in a documentary by Al Jazeera titled “Gold Mafia” which premiered in early 2023.
Angel has claimed to have predicted trump’s 2016 presidential victory. His associate, Rikki Doolan, a nationalist pastor from London led a 2018 pro-Trump rally in the U.K.
According to Instagram posts, Angel, an evangelical minister who preaches the prosperity gospel, and Doolan visited Trump Tower on Jan. 30, 2018, to meet with Eric Danziger, the chief executive officer of Trump Hotels, trump’s hotel management company. At the time of the meeting, Angel was hoping to build a hotel in New York City. That night, trump gave his first State of the Union address.
Angel posted a blog on his personal website that he was hoping “to finalize corporate ventures for his company,” mentioning “the grand opening of a hotel in New York City.”
Angel’s flamboyant ways have generated a large following in Zimbabwe. He uses social media to report on his luxurious life.
In addition to his ministries, Angel claims to be a successful entrepreneur with a series of businesses, with names like The Billion Group and Black Stallion, with interests in luxury resorts and a chain of hotels.
While preaching in February 2016, Angel told his audience that “God wants a Trump.” He later claimed that God had spoken to him, foretelling Trump’s victory.
Doolan organized the “I Am British” nationalist campaign to rally crowds to trump’s support.
Doolan was featured in Al Jazeera’s 2023 documentary “Gold Mafia” which implicated him in gold smuggling and money laundering activities in Zimbabwe. Doolan was recorded on film repeatedly telling Al Jazeera’s undercover reporters that he and Angel would be able to arrange a meeting with Zimbabwe President Mnangagwa in exchange for a “facilitation” fee, which was originally pegged at $200,000. During the meetings, Doolan said money laundering would not be a challenge “as long as you grease the wheels.”
Sudanese Deportations
The U.S. deported eight men to the violence-ridden African nation of South Sudan after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted restrictions on sending people to countries where they have no ties. The trump administration has said it is seeking more deals with African nations to take deportees from the U.S.
Only Nigeria has refused to take deportees who are citizens of other countries. The U.S. has sent hundreds of Venezuelans and others to Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama. Rwanda has been talking with the U.S about hosting deported migrants. Last year, the U.K. Supreme Court ruled a British government plan announced in 2022 to deport rejected asylum-seekers to the East African nation of Rwanda was illegal.
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the deportees to Eswatini are citizens of Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen and Laos. She would not say when they were deported but claimed that all are convicted criminals and “individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.”
The men “have been terrorizing American communities” but were now “off of American soil,” McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin’s claims are put in doubt by the fact that many detainees have been found to have no criminal records other than minor motor vehicle charges and being without documents.
One of the most notorious unwarranted detentions involved Kilmar Abrego Garcia who was sent to El Salvador’s notorious gang prison. It was later determined that Abrego Garcia, who has a wife and children in Maryland, was wrongfully deported, in violation of a U.S. immigration judge’s order that Abrego Garcia could not be deported to his homeland of El Salvador because of likely threats of gang violence against him.
The government has not released detailed information about detainees but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported that through April, of the 49,184 individuals detained in 2025, 31 percent were convicted of a crime and another 24 percent have pending criminal charges.
The White House has been lobbying to send deportees to at least 58 countries where they may not speak the native language or understand native customs. The Supreme Court recently granted an emergency request to overturn a federal judge’s restrictions on such removals.
El Salvador agreed to jail hundreds of so-called Venezuela gang suspects for $6 million while other countries are being paid $100,000 and more, including Rwanda, El Salvador, Brazil, China, Columbia, Costa Rica, Honduras, India, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela.