US Deports 59-Year-Old Roberto Mosquera to Eswatini Prison Over Attempted Murder Conviction
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Aug 12
US Deports 59-Year-Old Roberto Mosquera to Eswatini Prison Over Attempted Murder Conviction
1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Aug 12
Summary
Roberto Mosquera, a 59-year-old Cuban migrant who had lived in the United States since age 12, was flown from Texas to Eswatini and taken straight to the Matsapha maximum-security prison.
His removal stemmed from a past attempted murder case in Miami and a renewed Trump-era deportation push, even though Cuba had long refused to accept him back and had previously allowed him to remain under annual check-ins.
A June 2025 work-permit renewal appointment instead led to detention in Miami and El Paso, nearly two weeks without lawyer contact, then a multi-leg transfer via Djibouti with four other deportees from Jamaica, Laos, Yemen and Vietnam.
The men arrived after roughly 30 hours of travel, were put in a caged truck and delivered to prison as the Department of Homeland Security described them on X as "depraved monsters" whose home countries would not take them.
The case highlights a U.S. practice of sending hard-to-remove migrants to third countries, leaving Mosquera in a nation he had never heard of and where he may never regain freedom.
How did a routine paperwork check turn into a multimillion-dollar secret banishment to a maximum-security African prison?
Can a decades-old criminal record justify erasing someone into an opaque global deportation pipeline?
Outsourcing Deportation: The U.S.-Eswatini Third-Country Deal, 19,000 Expulsions, and the Human Cost of America’s New Migration Policy
Overview
In June 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the government to deport non-citizens to third countries without checking for personal ties or safety risks. This led to the aggressive expansion of the U.S. third-country deportation program, sending people like Roberto Mosquera—a Cuban national arrested while renewing his work permit—to Eswatini under a secretive $5.1 million deal. Upon arrival, Mosquera and others were detained indefinitely in harsh conditions, prompting hunger strikes and severe health decline. Despite strict communication barriers, Mosquera managed to contact the media, exposing the human cost and sparking international legal and public backlash against these controversial deportation agreements.