The United States sent five immigrants it says were convicted of serious crimes to the African nation of Eswatini, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said — an expansion of the Trump administration's largely secretive third-country deportation program.

Eswatini, a country of 1.2 million people bordering South Africa, is the latest nation to accept third-country deportees from the U.S. The Trump administration has sent hundreds of Venezuelans and others to Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama, and deported eight men earlier this month to South Sudan, also an African country.