By Nellie Peyton
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -A Cuban man deported by the Trump administration to the southern African country of Eswatini has started a hunger strike against his detention there, his lawyer said on Wednesday.
Roberto Mosquera del Peral was among five third-country nationals deported from the U.S. to Eswatini in July.
They have since been held in a maximum security prison along with 10 others deported in October, part of a broader ramp-up in third-country removals under U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
U.S. officials have said that the men deported to Eswatini were convicted criminals. Their lawyers say all of them had finished serving their sentences in the U.S. and that there was no legal basis to imprison them again.
“My client is arbitrarily detained, and now his life is on the line,” Alma David, Mosquera del Peral’s U.S.-based attorney, said in a statement, adding that he began the hunger strike on October 15.
A spokesperson for Eswatini’s correctional services department had no immediate comment, but said he would review the information.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security wrote on X in June that Mosquera del Peral, 58, had been arrested by immigration authorities in Miami. It said his criminal history included convictions for homicide, aggravated assault on a police officer and aggravated battery.
His attorney David told Reuters that was incorrect. She said he had been convicted of attempted murder, not murder, and had finished his sentence before he was deported. She demanded that he be permitted to meet his lawyer in Eswatini.
A local attorney acting on behalf of the deportees has been engaged in an ongoing legal battle to gain access to them, which the Eswatini government has so far refused.
(Reporting by Nellie Peyton; Additional reporting by Lunga Masuku; Editing by Muvija M)
