Roberto Mosquera was once a self-proclaimed “super Trump supporter.” Now, he’s trapped in a maximum-security prison in Africa after the Department of Homeland Security detained and falsely labeled him a killer.
Mosquera, 59, was taken into custody by ICE agents in South Florida during his annual check-in in June. He moved to the United States nearly 50 years ago from Cuba.
At the time, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin wrote on X that Mosquera was “convicted of first-degree murder and aggravated battery.”
“I was hysterical… It’s literally on their verified page that my dad is a murderer,” his daughter Monica Mosquera, 20, told the Daily Beast.
Public records show Mosquera was never convicted—or even charged—with homicide. In 1988, when he was 18 years old, Mosquera was charged with attempted murder after shooting a man in the leg. He served a nine-year prison sentence and “rebuilt his life,” according to his lawyer. He’s now a full-time plumber and doting dad to Monica and her 9-year-old sister.
Monica said her father was in a gang as a teenager and that the charge stemmed from a gang fight. “My dad did his time—he married my mom, who’s American, had American daughters, and changed his life around,” she said. “My dad was an amazing father; he is a good man.”
After her father was detained, Monica said officials from the Department of Homeland Security told her he was deported to Cuba. She later learned from her local news station that he was actually sent to a maximum-security prison in the southern African kingdom of Eswatini—a nation accused of human-rights abuses that none of the men have any connection to.
“They were saying he was a murderer… Then they lied to me saying that he was sent to Cuba, and I had to find out about a week later that he was actually sent to Africa,” Monica said.
The Daily Beast has reached out to ICE for comment.
Donald Trump’s administration deported Mosquera—and at least five other men—to Eswatini, despite their lack of ties to the African country.
At the time of their arrest, McLaughlin claimed on X that the men were “so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back.”
That, too, proved false.
The Eswatini government later said several of the countries had reached out to clarify that the U.S. never asked them to repatriate their citizens, CNN reported.
So far, only one of the men has been freed since their imprisonment in July. The Eswatini government has not charged any of them with a crime or provided a legal justification for their detention, according to Alma David, Mosquera’s U.S.-based attorney.
In a statement to the Associated Press, David said Mosquera has been on a hunger strike since Oct. 15.
“My client is arbitrarily detained, and now his life is on the line,” David wrote. “I urge the Eswatini Correctional Services to provide Mr. Mosquera’s family and me with an immediate update on his condition and to ensure that he is receiving adequate medical attention. I demand that Mr. Mosquera be permitted to meet with his lawyer in Eswatini.”
Their deportation appears to be part of a secretive transfer arrangement between the U.S. and Eswatini—an extension of Trump’s broader effort to expand the U.S. deportation program into Africa, despite warnings from human rights groups and lawyers who say the practice denies deportees due process and exposes them to abuse.
Documents obtained by The New York Times show that the Eswatini government at one point requested $500 million from the U.S. in exchange for accepting third-country deportees.
Monica, who does not support Trump, said her dad once saw the former president as a unifying voice.
“I asked him, ‘Why did you even support Trump?’” Monica said. “And he was like, ‘He’s the president. Have faith that things are gonna be different and things are gonna change.’”
Things did change for Monica—but not for the better.
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