From our southern Africa correspondent – Migrants previously convicted by US courts have been imprisoned in Africa’s last absolute monarchy, Eswatini, over the past several months. Since being deported from the US, they have found themselves in a country about which they know nothing, and where local residents look on these “criminal” arrivals with suspicion. Their abrupt journey to the small southern African kingdom stems from a secret deal struck by Trump administration as part of his programme of mass deportations investigated by “The Deportation Project”, undertaken by Forbidden Stories and a network of 72 journalists across 15 countries.
Protests are rare in the small southern African kingdom of Eswatini, and largely repressed. But that didn’t stop more than a hundred women from gathering on July 18, 2025 in front of the US embassy in Manzini, the economic capital of the country still widely known by its former name of Swaziland.
