Three men, including Jamaican national Orville Etoria, have been detained in a maximum-security prison in Eswatini for seven weeks without charge or access to legal counsel after being deported from the United States in July, their lawyers said on Tuesday.
The New York-based Legal Aid Society, which is representing Etoria, said the 62-year-old was “inexplicably” sent to the southern African nation even though Jamaica had agreed to take him back. Etoria, convicted of murder in 1997, was paroled in 2021 after serving more than two decades in prison.
He is the first of at least 20 deportees sent by U.S. authorities to African nations in recent months to be identified publicly. When announcing the deportation of five men to Eswatini in mid-July, the Department of Homeland Security described them as “so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.” The agency did not name the men but said they were nationals of Jamaica, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam, and Yemen.
The Legal Aid Society has rejected that claim, insisting Jamaica never refused Etoria’s return. “The U.S. government falsely claimed Jamaica refused to accept him back,” the group said in a statement. The Jamaican government also said that it had not refused his return.
A lawyer for two other men deported to Eswatini, from Laos and Vietnam, said they too had already served their sentences in the U.S. and had been reintegrated into their communities before being suddenly detained. “Then, without warning and explanation from either the U.S. or Eswatini governments, they were arbitrarily arrested and sent to a country to which they have never ever been,” attorney Tin Thanh Nguyen said.
Meanwhile, Jamaica’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Kamina Johnson Smith said Kingston is providing consular support to Etoria while pressing for his return home. Jamaica’s High Commission in Pretoria, along with the Honorary Consul in Eswatini, visited him on August 21.
“The team found Mr. Etoria in good spirits,” Johnson Smith said. “He has received regular medical attention, and arrangements are being put in place for further connection with his family and to meet his needs.”
Johnson Smith added that her ministry “continues its efforts toward Mr. Etoria’s early return to Jamaica” and remains in close contact with his family through Jamaica’s embassy in Washington, D.C.
