A Laotian immigrant who finished sentences for serious U.S. crimes has been released from an Eswatini prison after more than a year and is now bound for Laos.
Phone Chomsavanh left the Matsapha Correctional Complex near Mbabane on Sunday, then landed in Johannesburg on his way to Laos, his U.S.-based lawyer said.
He was one of five immigrants the United States flew to Eswatini in July 2025 on a military cargo plane under the Trump administration’s third-country deportation program, a tool built to remove people who already have final deportation orders when their home countries will not take them back right away.
Associated Press reporting described the release and the onward movement toward Laos after more than 14 months in custody in the southern African kingdom.
Chomsavanh was born in a refugee camp in Thailand after his parents fled Laos. His family moved to the United States when he was 7.
In the U.S. he was convicted of serious crimes. He had already served his sentences by the time immigration authorities removed him.
That sequence matters. He was not a pending asylum claimant waiting on a first hearing. He was a removable immigrant with criminal convictions behind him and a final deportation order in force.
When home countries stall, people in that posture can sit in limbo for years. The third-country program was designed to break that stall, move them out of the United States first, then sort the next destination.
Eswatini, Africa’s last absolute monarchy, agreed to take deportees. Under the agreement between the countries, the Trump administration paid Eswatini $5.1 million. The kingdom has received around 30 deportees so far.
Tin Thanh Nguyen, Chomsavanh’s U.S. lawyer, said he learned his client was headed to Eswatini only shortly before the cargo plane landed more than 14 months ago.
Nguyen said in a statement:
"He had already served his time. Instead they put him on a plane without telling him where it was headed and left him in a prison in a country he had never heard of, where nobody ever accused him of anything,"
He added:
"He sat there for more than a year. No notice, no hearing, no chance to object. That is not due process by any definition."
Those are the lawyer’s claims. Eswatini’s government spokesperson did not immediately acknowledge the release.
The Trump administration has defended the policy in plain terms: it is a way to quickly remove immigrants who already have final deportation orders when their home countries might not take them back at once. Chomsavanh’s own path, out of the U.S., held abroad, now moving toward Laos, tracks that design.
Advocacy groups Human Rights First and Refugees International, which monitor the flights, put the wider total at around 500 immigrants sent from the United States to African countries that are not their home nations since the program began last year. About a dozen African countries have accepted people under the effort.
The program has run largely in secrecy and has drawn legal challenges in the United States and in some countries that received the deportees.
Last month a U.S. appeals court upheld a judge’s ruling that halted the program. The court said it failed to give immigrants time to challenge removal to a third country if they fear persecution or torture there.
Last week the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in the other direction. It temporarily allowed the administration to keep making swift third-country removals and set arguments for December.
So the legal fight is live. The operational fact on the ground is simpler: a convicted immigrant with a final order left American soil, spent more than a year in Eswatini custody without local charges, and is now being sent toward the country tied to his citizenship.
Nguyen told the AP in separate messages that Chomsavanh had already left Eswatini and landed in Johannesburg en route to Laos. He is now being deported there.
That closes one chapter of a case that began with serious criminal convictions in the United States, moved through a third-country flight in the early months of the administration’s crackdown, and spent more than 14 months inside Matsapha before the Sunday release.
Taxpayers spent years on prosecution, incarceration, and immigration process for a man who finished his criminal sentences and still had no lawful right to remain. The third-country option exists because some governments slow-walk or refuse returns. Paying a partner nation to accept removals is one way to stop the United States from being the default holding pen.
Critics will keep calling the Eswatini stay a due-process failure. The competing record is that Chomsavanh’s criminal time was served, his deportation order was final, and he is no longer in an American community or an American jail.
Border security means little if final orders die in paperwork while home countries stall. Moving removable criminal immigrants out, then on to a country that will take them, is how a government keeps its word to lawful residents.
