'Ridiculous fascist games': ICE decides Kilmar Abrego Garcia to be deported to tiny African country of Eswatini – We Got This Covered
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Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura enter a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office on August 25, 2025 in Baltimore, Maryland. The U.S. Government is threatening to deport Garcia, a Maryland construction worker from El Salvador, to Uganda after he rejected a plea deal to be charged with Human Smuggling and deported to Costa Rica. Earlier this year Garcia was wrongfully deported to a notorious anti-terrorism prison CECOT in El Salvador. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) / King Mswati III dances with his men in front of young virgins at a traditional Reed dance ceremony at the stadium at the Royal Palace on August 30, 2009, in Ludzidzini, Swaziland. About 80.000 virgins from all over the country attended this yearly event, the biggest in Swazi culture. It was founded to celebrate the beauty of Swazi women and girls. King Mswati III, and absolute monarch, was born in 1968 and he has 14 wives and many children. The king danced with his men in front of the 80.000 girls. Many of the girls hope to get noticed by the king and to be chosen as a future wife, a ticket from poverty and into a life of privilege and luxury. The country is one of the poorest in the world and it is struggling with a high prevalence of HIV-Aids and severe poverty. (Photo by Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images)
Photos by Anna Moneymaker/Per-Anders Pettersson/Getty Images

‘Ridiculous fascist games’: ICE decides Kilmar Abrego Garcia to be deported to tiny African country of Eswatini

Basically a death sentence.

To ICE, Kilmar Abrego Garcia‘s life is basically a toy. Having earned their ire by committing the heinous crime of making them look foolish by deporting him by mistake, then vowing he would never return to the United States, and bullying him when he did return, they’ve finally settled on their ultimate punishment.

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Garcia will be banished to Eswatini. You’re forgiven for breaking out the atlas on this one, as this is a minuscule landlocked country that’s almost entirely encircled by South Africa. ICE was planning to remove Garcia to Uganda, which is as ridiculous a destination. But, apparently taking him at his word that he’d face “persecution or torture” there, they have instead chosen Eswatini.

Eswatini has a population of about 1.3 million, is governed by an absolute monarchy (King Mswati III has ruled since 1986), and political parties are banned. The nation is also notable for its ongoing health crisis: 28% of adults are HIV positive, and tuberculosis is widespread. As such, it has the 12th-lowest life expectancy in the world.

So, what can Garcia expect if he is indeed deported here? Five unfortunate U.S. immigrants have already made the trip and were immediately placed in solitary confinement in the maximum security prison, Matsapha Correctional Complex. They are expected to be held in isolation for a year. Predictably, the prison is a human rights nightmare, rife with arbitrary killings, torture, rotten food, and extremely limited access to legal representation.

The Eswatinis themselves aren’t happy about their country being used like this, with internal pressure groups billing this process as “human trafficking disguised as deportation”.

His only crime is making ICE look incompetent

It’s worth underlining at this point that, despite the Trump administration’s best efforts to paint Garcia as the love child of El Chapo and Machete, he has never been convicted of any crime in the United States or El Salvador. He was also in the United States legally when he was first arrested in March, under the protection of a “withholding of removal” judicial order permitting him to be in the United States.

But, from Trump and ICE’s perspective, he is 100% guilty of the heinous sin of making them look like incompetent morons, and for that, his life must be torn apart. From all accounts sending him halfway around the world to Eswatini is, at minimum, sending him to be tortured (how else would you describe a year in solitary confinement in a nightmare prison?) or, more likely, a death sentence.

At this point, if they just want to kill Garcia, the honest thing for ICE to do is dirty their own hands, take some responsibility, and execute him themselves. Sending him to Eswatini is doing that anyway, why prolong his agony?


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David James
I'm a writer/editor who's been at the site since 2015. I cover politics, weird history, video games and... well, anything really. Keep it breezy, keep it light, keep it straightforward.