You cannot claim someone refuses a meeting they were never allowed to have.
Inside a maximum security prison in Eswatini, a small landlocked kingdom in southern Africa, four men have spent the better part of a year unable to meet face-to-face with a lawyer. That changed Thursday, when Eswatini's supreme court ruled they have the right to see local counsel — a decision that took nine months of litigation to reach.
The four men — nationals of Cambodia, Cuba, Vietnam, and Yemen — were deported to Eswatini by the United States government last July. None of them has any connection to the country. They were sent there as part of the Trump administration's aggressive push to accelerate deportations, offloading people to willing third-party nations regardless of whether those nations have any relationship to the individuals being removed.
The US government characterized the men as dangerous criminals. Their American lawyers pushed back, saying the men had already completed their sentences for crimes committed on US soil. Whatever their histories, they found themselves in a foreign prison, in a country whose language and customs they did not share, cut off from in-person legal help. Eswatini's correctional services permitted phone calls to their US-based attorneys but refused to allow a local human rights lawyer, Sibusiso Magnificent Nhlabatsi, to visit them in person.
The government's justification for blocking Nhlabatsi was that the men themselves had shown no interest in meeting him. The three-judge panel was unconvinced. In their ruling, they noted that there was no real harm in granting access, and that if the men truly did not want to see the lawyer, they could tell him so directly — to his face. The court's logic was simple: you cannot claim someone refuses a meeting they were never allowed to have.
Alma David, a US attorney representing several of the men, did not mince words about what the ruling revealed. She said the fact that it required nearly nine months of legal battle, culminating in a decision from the country's highest court, just to secure something as basic as a lawyer visit, says everything about how determined the Eswatini government has been to deny these men fundamental rights.
The group of deportees has shifted in composition since July. Of the original five sent to Eswatini, one was returned to Jamaica in September. Ten more arrived in October; one of that group was repatriated to Cambodia on March 26. Four additional men arrived last month. The Eswatini government spokesperson, Thabile Mdluli, did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday's ruling. In prior statements, she has maintained that the government has made every reasonable effort to house the men in conditions consistent with their fundamental rights and human dignity.
Eswatini is not alone in this arrangement. The US has deported people to Ghana, South Sudan, Uganda, and other nations with which the deportees have no ties. Human rights lawyers and advocacy organizations have described the practice as a form of human trafficking — moving people across borders not to their home countries, but to wherever the US can find a government willing to accept them.
Thursday's ruling is a narrow but significant crack in the wall. The men can now, at least in principle, sit across from a lawyer who is physically present in the same country. What that access ultimately produces — whether it leads to legal challenges, repatriations, or something else — remains to be seen. But for now, the highest court in Eswatini has said plainly what should never have needed saying: a man in a cell has the right to meet his lawyer.
Notable Quotes
The fact that it took nearly nine months of litigation and a ruling by the highest court just to let my clients meet a local lawyer says everything about how hard the government of Eswatini has fought to deny them the most basic rights.— Alma David, US attorney for several of the detained men
There can be no real harm in granting the respondent access to the detainees — it will then be up to the detainees, if they do not wish to see him, to say so to his face.— Eswatini Supreme Court, three-judge panel ruling
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does it matter that the lawyer had to be local? They had phone access to their US attorneys.
Phone calls across continents, to lawyers operating under a different legal system, can only go so far. A local lawyer can walk into a court, file papers, and speak the language of the jurisdiction holding these men.
The government said the men showed no interest in meeting the lawyer. Is there any reason to take that claim seriously?
The court didn't. And the logic holds — you can't establish someone's indifference to a meeting they were never permitted to have. It's a circular argument that the judges saw through immediately.
What does it mean that these men were sent to Eswatini specifically — a country none of them is from?
It means the destination wasn't about them at all. It was about logistics — finding a government willing to accept the transfer. The men's nationalities, histories, and ties were beside the point.
Human rights groups are calling this human trafficking. Is that framing legally meaningful or just rhetorical?
It's both. Trafficking definitions typically involve moving people across borders by force or coercion for exploitation. Whether that framing holds legally is contested, but it's not an idle comparison.
Nine months. What was actually happening during that time?
Litigation, mostly. Nhlabatsi was fighting through the courts for the right to simply enter the prison. Meanwhile the men were sitting in a maximum security facility in a country they'd never been to, with no local legal representation.
Does the ruling actually change their situation, or is it symbolic?
It opens a door. Whether anything walks through it depends on what Nhlabatsi finds when he finally gets inside — and whether there are legal avenues left to pursue in Eswatini or back in the US.