He Was Deported to a Country He’d Never Heard Of

The Daily

This episode explores the Trump administration's controversial 'third country deportation' strategy, which involves sending undocumented immigrants

Key takeaways

• The Trump administration has utilized 'third country deportations' to bypass countries that refuse to accept deportees.
• Roberto Mosquera, a Cuban-American resident of the US since childhood, was deported to Eswatini, a country he had never visited.

Main topics

• Third-country deportation policy
• Human rights in Eswatini

Notable quotes

I was born in Cuba, but I was raised in America.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a sobering look at how shifting immigration enfo

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) Hey, I'm Tracy Mumford. There is a lot happening right now. The Headlines podcast from The New York Times will catch you up on the latest in 10 minutes or less. We'll take you inside breaking news and big investigations from The Times newsroom. Plus, bring you the stories that make you go, huh, whoa, I didn't know that. Listen to our show, The Headlines, every weekday morning, wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 5 (0:31) From The New York Times, I'm Rachel Abrams, and this is The Daily. In its effort to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible, the Trump administration has relied more and more on a highly controversial strategy, deporting people to countries they have no connection to. The practice has drawn outrage from civil rights groups and immigrant advocates. And last week, the federal court ruled that it was illegal because it violated people's rights to due process. The administration has challenged that ruling, and now it's in front of the Supreme Court. And so today, my colleague, Nicholas Casey, explains what it actually looks like to be sent to a country you do not know. It's Monday, September 28th. Nick Casey, welcome back to The Daily. Speaker 3 (1:39) Thanks, Rachel. Speaker 5 (1:41) So, Nick, late last week, we got word that the Supreme Court was basically poised to decide whether to block the Trump administration's ability to deport people to countries they are not from. This is known as third country deportations. It's also a practice that you've been following extensively. So tell us how this works. Speaker 3 (1:57) So a third country deportation is when the U.S. deports someone not to the country that they're from, but to just another country. It can even seem to be like a random country. Often the person has no connection to the place that they're being sent to. And this is a strategy which has become a hallmark now of the Trump administration. Trump came to office, obviously promising to really ramp up. deportations. And this is very much part of it. Speaker 2 (2:28) But Speaker 3 (2:28) this goes beyond really anything that's been done by previous administrations, largely because many of the countries that people are being sent to now have really spotty human rights records. And the fact that the U.S. has been sending people to these countries just kind of raises fundamental questions about America itself. What is our relationship to these places that have got bad human rights records? What's our relationship to people that we are deporting? What human rights do we grant these people? And so this week, the Supreme Court is going to decide, essentially, can this practice continue? Speaker 5 (3:07) And what do we know about the people who are being deported this way? Speaker 3 (3:11) Yeah, I mean, according to the administration, this is a tool that it's been using to go after people with criminal records. They've even called them... depraved monsters. They've said that they are the worst of the worst. This is why it's doing it. And it is true that in the case of people that have committed crimes in the U.S. and have served jail time, it's pretty common that their countries of origin may say no when America is asking to send them back. But I've been looking into these deportations, and I've seen, like, this practice is sweeping up people with all kinds of different backgrounds, not just people with criminal backgrounds. It is true. There are a number of people that have committed crimes that are getting deported this way. There's also another class of people that's also quite large that are being deported this way, who are people that immigration judges had banned from being deported to their countries of origin, because if they were, they faced a credible threat, usually of torture. And these are the reasons why the Trump administration has had trouble deporting these people. And for the last few months, I've been talking to one man in particular who's been swept up in this. And his name is Roberto Mosquera. Speaker 5 (4:28) So tell us about Roberto. Who is he? Speaker 1 (4:30) Hey, Roberto, how are you doing? I'm doing okay, man. Okay, good. Speaker 3 (4:38) Roberto Bosqueda is 59, and he's been in the U.S. almost all of his life. Speaker 1 (4:45) I was born in Cuba, but I was raised in America. Speaker 3 (4:49) He came in 1980 from Cuba in a boat lift. Speaker 1 (4:53) I came here with my mother and my sister. We ran away from the communists, you know, in Cuba. Speaker 3 (5:00) And Roberto was only 12 when he came. This is the only country he's really known as home. He remembers a little bit about Cuba, but he doesn't remember that much. And they settled into Miami. Speaker 1 (5:13) I didn't have no father. And my mother, she tried the best. But it was very difficult to us, you know. Speaker 3 (5:21) And it wasn't long after they moved that Roberto began to get into trouble. Speaker 1 (5:26) I wish I could have changed things, you know, and do better with my life, you know. Speaker 3 (5:32) He became a rebellious teenager and he joined a gang. Speaker 1 (5:35) But I was just like, get the freedom that I needed on the streets, you know. We had the kids like hanging around and fighting. Speaker 3 (5:45) There were a lot of car thefts, shootings, you know, attacking rival gang members in the street. And eventually he ended up going to trial for a shooting that took place. Speaker 1 (5:56) Somebody got shot. A lot of my friends got killed. Speaker 3 (6:00) Roberto says he actually wasn't part of the shooting. He admitted to all kinds of crimes, which he committed over the years. But he said this was one that he actually hadn't done. Speaker 1 (6:10) Yes, without doing anything. Speaker 3 (6:13) And he took a plea deal. Even though he said he hadn't committed the crime, he said that his lawyer had said, if you don't take this deal, you're going to be sent to jail for many more years. So he served nine years in jail. And after being released after those nine years, we're talking about the 1990s now, usually you would get deported at that point. Speaker 5 (6:37) But Speaker 3 (6:37) in Roberto's case, that's not what happened. Roberto was from Cuba, and Cuba wasn't cooperating with deportations of people from America at that time. Speaker 5 (6:47) Right. Roberto is one of these people who the United States government may have wanted to deport at one point, but effectively could not. Speaker 3 (6:54) Yeah. I mean, the U.S. government was kind of in a bind here. On one end, they couldn't just send Roberto home, but they also couldn't keep him in. jail indefinitely, because to do that to someone, you've got to charge them with something. And they didn't have charges to keep Roberto in jail. So for years, administrations,