Juan Carlos Font Agüero, cubano de 59 años, lleva meses detenido en el Reino de Esuatini —una pequeña monarquía absoluta en el sur de África— sin cargos, sin abogado y sin fecha de liberación, después de ser deportado desde Estados Unidos en noviembre de 2025. En un video circulated on social media, Font Agüero rompe el silencio y confiesa que ha llegado al límite: ya no pide llegar a ningún país libre, solo quiere volver a Cuba.
"Well, I have already given up. I’m sixty years old now. My whole family is in Cuba. I say, 'Hey, I really want to go to Cuba.' Well, nothing. Not even like that," declares the Cuban in a testimony recorded from the Matsapha prison and shared on Facebook by fellow Cuban Raúl Hernández.
Font Agüero recounts that he was detained at a checkpoint in Buffalo, New York, while working as a truck driver. After six months in that state, he began a series of transfers: Montana, Texas, Alexandria (Louisiana), and Puerto Rico, until he realized they were taking him to Africa. The journey lasted three days.
"We are in Africa, in Eswatini, a country that I found out existed while I was here. It's right next to South Africa," he says.
Upon arrival, the scene was intimidating: "They closed the airport and the entire army was waiting for us. As if we were military, I don’t know, traitors. With AKM, R15, the only thing missing were the missiles."
Since then, Font Agüero has been held at the Matsapha Maximum Security Correctional Center, which operates at 171% of its capacity and has a documented history of abuse, according to the U.S. State Department itself. "There is no law here; it is whatever the king says. We cannot have a lawyer," he reports.
The living conditions are precarious: two meals a day, both the same. "Here, it's at eleven in the morning, rice and soup. At two in the afternoon, it's the meal, rice and soup. That's the food we have here, brother."
"What tears him apart the most, he says, is not hunger or physical confinement, but total uncertainty: 'Being imprisoned indefinitely, without cause, without accusation, without a crime, without anything, is what affects one the most.'"
Font Agüero holds the three involved governments accountable. "They sold us as a commodity and bought us as a commodity," he asserts, stating that Cuba, the United States, and Eswatini have all equally ignored him. His family on the island has submitted letters and made efforts to secure his return, but to no avail.
The case falls under the deportation program to third countries initiated by the Trump administration, designed for migrants with serious criminal records whose countries of origin refuse to accept them. In May 2025, Washington signed an agreement with Eswatini, under which that country agrees to accept up to 160 deportees in exchange for $5.1 million in financial assistance.
Font Agüero was not the first. The Cuban Roberto Mosquera del Peral arrived in Eswatini in July 2025 and went on a hunger strike in October of that year to protest the lack of charges and access to a lawyer. His attorney, Alma David, told the AP agency, "My client is being detained arbitrarily, and now his life is in danger."
Human Rights Watch and the local organization SWALIMO legally challenged the agreement, but a higher court in Eswatini dismissed the case in March 2026, although the decision was appealed. In the United States, Federal Judge Brian Murphy declared the program illegal on February 27, 2026, for violating federal immigration law and due process, although it continues to operate under other modalities.
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