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A Cambodian man deported by the United States to the African kingdom of Eswatini under the Trump administration’s third-country program was released on Wednesday to be repatriated to Cambodia after spending five months in detention at a maximum-security prison with other deportees, his lawyer said.

Pheap Rom was deported to the southern African nation in October and held at the Matsapha Correctional Center. After his release, he took a commercial flight to Johannesburg, South Africa, to start his journey to Cambodia, his U.S.-based lawyer, Tin Thanh Nguyen, told The Associated Press.

The U.S. has sent 19 migrants from other countries to Eswatini in three batches since July. Rom is the second to be repatriated after a Jamaican man was flown home in September.

Detention conditions

When Rom and a group of 9 other shackled deportees arrived in Eswatini on Oct. 6, they were greeted by about 20 or 30 military personnel wearing masks and carrying machine guns surrounding the private jet.

None of the detainees knew where they were going, though some felt hopeful they would be freed after finishing their prison sentences. Rom had finished his 15-year prison sentence in the U.S. for attempted murder.

As they departed the airport and veered into a rural road, panic set in. “They pulled into the dirt road and you see nothing but dirt road. I was like, oh, yeah, they’re definitely going to kill us and just dump us on this dirt road,” Rom, 43, said during a phone interview while he was still detained in Eswatini last week.

Instead, they were escorted into Matsapha Correctional Centre, a maximum-security prison, where the men would be detained, without any charges, and kept apart from inmates convicted of murder, terrorism, robbery and other crimes committed in that country.

The first two months were the hardest, Rom said. Inmates were woken up at 7:30 a.m., allowed 15 minutes outdoors, and were inside their cells at 5:30 p.m.

Phone use was permitted once a week and limited to 10 or 15 minutes. “And that once a week they will sit right there and listen to your conversation and then they will write down what you’re talking about in a book that they have, in the logbook that they had,” he said, referring to the guards.

If families were asleep, working or didn’t have WhatsApp, they were unable to call again for another week. Under those conditions, it was difficult to reach attorneys.

A report released by the Senate Foreign Committee Relations estimated it cost about $413,000 to deport a person from the United States to Eswatini.

Despite the expense, Rom described impoverished conditions at the prison.

Inmates received one roll of toilet paper and a bar of soap per week.

Meals were often meatless. For breakfast, inmates received either porridge or a piece of bread with tea, Rom said. For lunch and dinner, they received a scoop of rice and vegetable broth or a side of beans. Some days they received chicken, but often if they wanted protein, they had to buy boiled eggs, chicken or beef platters from the commissary.

Conditions improved in the last three months of Rom’s detention. Outdoor time was increased and inmates had access to the internet and cellphones to make international calls to family, friends and lawyers.

Rom’s family moved to the U.S. as refugees when he was a child and later became lawful permanent residents. Rom lost his legal status during removal proceedings and was ordered deported. Though he has not lived in Cambodia, he said he was still excited to go there and be free.

“I hope that my repatriation sets a path for their repatriation, because these guys are still human beings, fathers, sons, uncles and they deserve due process,” Rom said.

Trump’s hard-line stance

U.S. President Donald Trump has taken a hard-line stance on immigration and the U.S. has deported around 300 migrants to countries they have no ties with under the third-country program, according to a report compiled by Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Lawyers have criticized the program as unlawful.

The U.S. has struck deals with at least seven African nations to take some of those migrants. The U.S. paid Eswatini $5.1 million to take up to 160 deportees, according to details of the deal released by the U.S. State Department. While Eswatini’s government has previously said the migrants are there in “transit” on their way home, the deal allows them to be held in Eswatini for up to a year.

Rom served a 15-year prison sentence in the U.S. for attempted murder and was released in late 2024, Nguyen said, adding in a statement that Rom being held at the prison in Eswatini for five months was unlawful because he faced no criminal charges in the African country.

“Rom’s release proves what we have argued from the beginning. These third-country deportations are unnecessary and unlawful,” Nguyen said.

Challenging third-country deportations

The U.S. State Department and the Department of Homeland Security have defended third-country deportations as a means to quickly remove people who are in the U.S. illegally. Many of the deportees sent to Eswatini were convicted of serious crimes and had completed their sentences in the U.S.

But lawyers say sending migrants to countries they have no ties with is a tactic by the administration to bypass U.S. immigration laws and denies the deportees their rights, including a fundamental principle that anyone being detained should be able to challenge it in court. Third-country deportations have been the subject of several legal cases, both in the U.S. and in some countries where migrants are sent.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to go ahead with third-country deportations. In February, a U.S. federal judge ruled that the policy was unlawful because it didn’t give migrants notice of where they were being sent or an opportunity to challenge their deportations. An appeals court lifted that order this month.

The deportations have been the subject of two legal challenges in Eswatini, which is ruled by a king and is one of the last absolute monarchies in the world. An Eswatini lawyer acting on behalf of deportees being held at the Matsapha prison — where Rom was also held — says he has been denied access to them and has sued the government.

In a separate case, local advocacy groups have challenged the legality of Eswatini holding foreign nationals for months in a prison.

African deals under scrutiny

The Trump administration’s choice of African countries to strike deportation deals with and pay money to is also under scrutiny. It includes nations with notoriously repressive governments and sketchy human rights records — such as Eswatini, South Sudan and Equatorial Guinea.

Eswatini’s King Mswati III has long been accused of clamping down on pro-democracy movements, sometimes violently.

The U.S. has sent more than two dozen deportees to Equatorial Guinea, a small, authoritarian state in West Africa ruled by the same president since 1979 and where the government is accused of being one of the most corrupt in the world.

Democrats in the U.S. have questioned the Trump administration over a $7.5 million payment it made to the government of Equatorial Guinea.

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AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas.