The United States says it has sent five immigrants to the small African nation of Eswatini in an expansion of the Trump administration’s third-country deportation program.

The administration has made the practice of third country deportations central to its sweeping immigration policy.

"A safe third country deportation flight to Eswatini in Southern Africa has landed — This flight took individuals so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back," U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said late on Tuesday.