Pheap Rom thought he was being transferred to another detention center when last fall he saw “Eswatini” on his paperwork.
Instead, the 43-year-old Cambodian refugee was put on a plane to the small African kingdom and held for months in a maximum-security prison, where he had no legal status, no charges against him and little ability to challenge his confinement.
With that imprisonment, Rom joined a growing number of migrants caught in a broader shift in U.S. deportation policy. Over the last year, the Trump administration has dramatically expanded a little-known tactic of sending migrants to countries where they have no ties. Critics say this outsources detention to foreign governments − often with records of human rights abuses, minimal oversight and unclear legal protections.
In more than two dozen countries, deportees like Rom have been held in hotels, shelters and prisons under agreements brokered by the United States during President Donald Trump's second term.
"They’re just being snatched up, thrown on a plane and sent out to these countries," Rom told USA TODAY in a video call from Cambodia, where he's lived since late March, after spending over five months in an Eswatini prison. Rom is just the second person released from Eswatini's Matsapha Correctional Centre, where at least 19 people deported from the United States have been held.
