Deported After 45 Years, Imprisoned in a Foreign Land

Roberto Mosquera del Peral, a 58-year-old Cuban national who lived in the United States for 45 years, was deported to Eswatini in July 2025 under the Trump administration’s third-country deportation program. More than a year later, he remains imprisoned at the Matsapha Correctional Complex, a maximum-security prison outside Mbabane, Eswatini’s administrative capital—and he may never be released.

Mosquera’s case, detailed in a New York Times magazine feature published Wednesday, represents what human rights advocates describe as a new class of prisoner created by America’s immigration crackdown: individuals who have served their sentences in the U.S., been deported to countries they have no connection to, and then imprisoned indefinitely without charge.

A Life Built Over Four Decades

Mosquera arrived in the United States in 1980 during the Mariel Boatlift period, after his family fled Cuba by taking refuge in the Peruvian embassy in Havana. His mother had been a political prisoner for 18 months for being a Jehovah’s Witness. Cuba later informed him he had lost his Cuban citizenship.

Because Cuba was not cooperating with U.S. deportations, Mosquera was allowed to remain in the country, provided he checked in with immigration authorities each year. Over the following decades, he built a new life as a specialty plumber and born-again Christian, married, and raised four daughters.

His criminal history includes a 1988 arrest and subsequent conviction for attempted first-degree murder, along with additional arrests in 2008 and 2015 for offenses including grand theft auto, assaulting a law enforcement official, and misdemeanor assault. Court records show he completed his sentences for these offenses.

The Deportation

In June 2025, Mosquera was arrested by ICE at a routine check-in in Miami. On July 16, 2025, he was among five men—from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Vietnam, and Yemen—deported to Eswatini, a small kingdom in southern Africa, under a secretive agreement signed in May 2025. The U.S. agreed to pay Eswatini $5.1 million to accept up to 160 deportees, according to documents reviewed by Mother Jones.

The Department of Homeland Security announced the deportations in social media posts, claiming the men were “uniquely barbaric” and that their home countries refused to take them back. DHS said Mosquera had been convicted of homicide, but his lawyer Alma David says he was convicted of attempted murder—not murder—and had completed his sentence before being deported.

Imprisoned Without Charge

Mosquera has been held at the Matsapha Correctional Complex since his arrival, despite having committed no crime in Eswatini and having served his sentences in the United States. The Guardian reported that the five men initially deported were held in solitary confinement, and an Eswatini government spokesperson said the terms of the agreement between the U.S. and Eswatini “remain classified.”

Lawyers representing the deportees say they have been denied access to their clients. Tin Thanh Nguyen, a North Carolina-based attorney representing five men from Vietnam and Laos, said: “I cannot call [my clients]. I cannot email them. I cannot communicate through local counsel because the Eswatini government blocks all attorney access.”

Hunger Strike and Family’s Plea

On October 15, 2025, Mosquera began a hunger strike to protest his arbitrary detention without charge or access to legal counsel. His lawyer Alma David warned that his health was deteriorating, stating: “My client is arbitrarily detained, and now his life is on the line. I urge the Eswatini Correctional Services to provide Mr. Mosquera’s family and me with an immediate update on his condition and to ensure that he is receiving adequate medical attention.”

The Eswatini government characterized the hunger strike as “religious practices,” claiming Mosquera was “fasting and praying because he was missing his family.” David disputed this characterization, saying: “It is not a religious practice. It’s an act of desperation and protest.”

Amnesty International issued a statement on the hunger strike, with Regional Director Tigere Chagutah saying: “Roberto Mosquera del Peral’s hunger strike is a stark warning about the human cost of secret transfer arrangements and unlawful detention without due process.”

Mosquera’s daughter, Mónica, has publicly demanded answers from the U.S. government. Speaking to Cuba Headlines, she said: “I don’t understand why they’re saying all this about my dad. It’s not true. He’s a good man.” She also noted that her father had occasionally shown support for President Trump on social media, leaving him feeling “betrayed.” “He’s very disappointed and heartbroken. He wanted to cry when we spoke,” she said.

A Growing Program

The third-country deportation program has expanded significantly since its inception. As of July 2026, at least 30 people had been deported to Eswatini, with 11 more arriving on July 8, 2026. Amnesty International noted in July 2026 that the secretive arrangement “has not ended, it has expanded.”

Only two deportees have been repatriated from Eswatini: Orville Etoria, a Jamaican man returned in September 2025 after Jamaica’s government made clear it had not refused to take him back, and Pheap Rom, a Cambodian man repatriated in March 2026. Rom told Arab News that he and fellow deportees “went through misery” during their first two months at Matsapha, allowed outdoors for only 15 minutes a day and given one weekly phone call.

Legal and Human Rights Concerns

U.S. law makes clear that people can be deported to third countries only when it is “impracticable, inadvisable, or impossible” to send them to countries to which they have close ties. Lawyers argue there is no legal basis to imprison the deportees again in Eswatini, where they have committed no crimes.

Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, warned: “But make no mistake, this is going to happen to people without criminal convictions.”

Eswatini is Africa’s last remaining absolute monarchy, ruled by King Mswati III. The U.S. State Department’s human rights report on Eswatini cited “credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government.”

What’s Next

As the one-year anniversary of Mosquera’s deportation passed in July 2026, his fate—and that of the other men still held at Matsapha—remains uncertain. A court in Eswatini ordered lawyers to have access to the deportees, but the government immediately appealed. Lawyers say the goal appears to be to stonewall until the men are removed from Eswatini, at which point their claims would become moot.

Mosquera’s own words, captured in a video that circulated on social media and reported by Aroma de Cuba, capture the existential limbo he faces: “The United States doesn’t want us. Africa says we’re not Africans. So where do we belong?”

For now, the answer remains unclear—both for Mosquera and for the dozens of other men caught in what lawyers describe as a “legal black hole” created by America’s immigration crackdown.