Phone Chomsavanh's release from Eswatini's Matsapha prison closes one chapter of the Trump regime's third-country deportation scheme. For the Caribbean men flown to the same cells, the story is far from over.
MONTEGO BAY, JAMAICA, October 5, 2026 - On Sunday, Phone Chomsavanh walked out of the Matsapha Correctional Complex, a maximum-security prison near Mbabane, after more than 14 months in a country he had never heard of.
Born in a Thai refugee camp and raised in the United States from the age of seven, he had served his sentence for a serious crime before the Trump regime put him on a military cargo plane in July 2025 without telling him where it was headed. He is now on his way to Laos, his lawyer, Tin Thanh Nguyen, told The Associated Press.
