Washington, DC - In response to the news that the Trump administration has sent 10 people to Eswatini, including at least two people from Vietnam, Stacy Suh, Program Director of Detention Watch Network issued the following statement:
“Trump continues to disappear and exile people as a part of his unrelenting pursuit of demonizing immigrants, completely disregarding people's well-being and humanity. Trump’s expansion of third country deportations, when a person is deported to a country other than their country of origin, where they often have no connection, is a clear tool of propaganda to dehumanize and villainize people. Shockingly, some people deported remain incarcerated, have not been repatriated, or their whereabouts are unknown, like in the case of Tuan Phan who was deported to South Sudan in July. Third country deportations are often reached through quid pro quo deals under diplomatic and financial pressures from the US that are shrouded in secrecy. By expelling people out of sight and out of mind to remote prisons and war-torn, unstable countries, the Trump regime is attempting to normalize the offshoring of immigration detention and third country deportations as a new and expanded model of incarceration and deportation.
“Simply put, the administration is putting people’s lives at risk by obscuring transparency, cutting people off from their support networks, denying them due process, and subjecting them to brutal conditions, at times indefinitely. Trump is doing this with little to no details or oversight, and in defiance of court orders — all the while people languish in limbo.”
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Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.