Phone Chomsavanh, a Laotian citizen who was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and moved to the U.S. with his family at age 7, was released from Eswatini's maximum-security Matsapha Correctional Complex on Sunday after being held there for more than 14 months. He was deported to Eswatini in July 2025 under the Trump administration's third-country deportation program after already completing his U.S. prison sentence, one of five immigrants sent there at the time. His lawyer, Tin Thanh Nguyen, said he was given no notice, hearing, or chance to object before being flown to a country he had no ties to, saying, '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.' Following his release, he traveled through Johannesburg en route to Laos. The third-country deportation program has sent about 500 immigrants to African nations that are not their countries of origin, with Eswatini receiving roughly 30 people under an agreement with the U.S. in exchange for $5.1 million in payments.