JAMAICA- The Government wants clarification on reports that a Jamaican national was deported to an African country.

KINGSTON, Jamaica, CMC – The Jamaican government says it is seeking clarification from the United States over international media reports that five migrants, including a Jamaican national, had been deported to the African country of Eswatini earlier this week.

The US Department of Homeland Security, in confirming the deportation, described those sent to the African country as “barbaric” criminals.

Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the five men sent to Eswatini are citizens of Vietnam, Jamaica, Cuba, Yemen, and Laos, and that they had arrived on a plane without providing further details.

She said they were all convicted criminals and “individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back” and that the men “have been terrorizing American communities”. Still, she was now “off American soil”.

But in a post on X, formerly Twitter, Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister, Kamina Johnson Smith, confirmed that Kingston was seeking clarification from Washington with regards to the deportation of the Jamaican national to the African country under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation programme.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade is aware of reports in the public domain of the transfer of individuals, purportedly including a Jamaican national, to Eswatini. The Ministry has initiated enquiries with the US authorities to ascertain the veracity of the reported inclusion of a Jamaican in the transfer,” Johnson Smith said.

“The Government has not refused the return of any of our nationals to Jamaica, and accordingly, if the reports are confirmed, will continue its engagements with the US on the arrangements necessary to facilitate the individual’s return to Jamaica.

“We will keep the public updated as soon as further verified information is obtained,” she wrote.

The US Supreme Court has given the Trump administration the green light to deport undocumented migrants to countries that are not their own, with the administration defending the third-country deportations as necessary, since the home nations of some of those being targeted for removal often refuse to accept them.

The US has already deported eight men to South Sudan.