US Migrants Trapped in West African Nation After Secret Deportation Deal

A 28-year-old refugee who was granted protection by a U.S. judge was instead deported to Equatorial Guinea under a secret Trump-era agreement. The West African nation holds 29 deportees in detention with no asylum system, forcing many to return to dangerous home countries.

A young East African refugee thought he was finally safe when a California immigration judge granted him protection after 13 months in detention. Despite his asylum denial, the court ruled he couldn’t be sent home due to safety concerns.

“He told me: ‘Welcome to the U.S.,” the 28-year-old told The Associated Press, sharing his legal paperwork. “You are now protected by the U.S. law, so you can leave the center, work and stay in this country.”

Instead of freedom, the man found himself shackled aboard a charter flight bound for Equatorial Guinea, a West African oil-rich dictatorship that made a covert agreement with the Trump administration to accept deported migrants. The nation now serves as a holding station for people who cannot legally be returned to their homelands.

The refugee, who asked to remain unnamed due to safety fears, said he escaped his birth country after facing violence and imprisonment based on his ethnicity.

He joins 28 others sent to Equatorial Guinea, which Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the leading Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has labeled “one of the most corrupt governments in the world.”

Seven African countries have made similar arrangements with the United States to accept third-country deportees, creating what legal advocates describe as a workaround to American protection laws. Most of those sent away had received court orders preventing their return home, according to their attorneys.

The Associated Press previously spoke with a Moroccan gay asylum-seeker who was flown to Cameroon and eventually felt pressured to return to Morocco, where homosexuality is criminalized.

During a telephone conversation, the 28-year-old described how Equatorial Guinea officials push him to leave despite filing an asylum request there, which AP reviewed.

“They told us there is no any asylum or any protection in this country for us,” he explained. “So the best option is to leave the country as soon as possible.”

However, he said going back to a nation torn by ethnic violence was “not an option.”

America is sending people to other nations “to circumvent laws that forbid sending a person to a country where their life or freedom would be threatened,” explained Meredyth Yoon, litigation director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice, who has assisted deportees in Equatorial Guinea.

Yoon confirmed key details of the asylum-seeker’s story.

“Once deported, these individuals face impossible alternatives: indefinite detention without access to counsel, or forced deportation to the very countries they fled from,” she stated.

The 29 deportees originated from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mauritania, Angola, Congo, Chad, Georgia, Ghana and Nigeria, according to a visiting attorney who requested anonymity given the country’s poor human rights situation. Officials prevented him from meeting most detainees.

The refugee said his deportation occurred in January. Previously, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents tried forcing him to sign papers claiming he wanted voluntary return to his homeland. He said they seemed shocked he could read the document, quoting one officer as saying: “I never knew Black people could read and write.”

After refusing to sign, he was moved to Arizona, where he spent five months in a windowless room with several others. Sanitation was poor and medical care was “very difficult” to obtain.

“One guy in my room became crazy and started shouting and hitting himself because he wanted to go home,” he recalled.

A judge rejected his asylum petition but approved protection under American law and the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which blocks return home while permitting transfer to a supposedly safe third nation.

“All the people told me that we are going back to Africa,” he remembered. “I needed to speak with my lawyer, but these ICE officers started using force, they started beating me.”

Following moves through California, Texas and Louisiana, he was handcuffed and transported to an airport during overnight hours.

The aircraft was operated by Omni Air International, a charter company, carrying others in similar situations, he said.

Upon landing, he learned their destination was Equatorial Guinea.

A Department of Homeland Security representative denied his allegations, stating ICE officers “did NOT beat, coerce, or use racial slurs” against him, calling him “an illegal alien” who “was processed as an expedited removal and was removed to Equatorial Guinea.”

“All of these illegal aliens deported to Equatorial Guinea received due process and had a final order of removal,” they added.

The man and fellow deportees are held in Malabo, the former capital city.

“It’s an old closed hotel and there are no other customers,” he described. “Most of us were sick because of the food. I was hospitalized for two days. There is also malaria here, two guys were hospitalized with that.”

Yoon said 17 detainees have been forced back to their origin countries after being told no alternatives exist, since Equatorial Guinea lacks asylum procedures.

“Everyone who I’ve talked to since they left is not in a good situation,” she noted. “Many of them are in hiding.”

One deportee returned to Mauritania still attempted requesting asylum from the prime minister’s office, according to documents reviewed by AP. The visiting lawyer forwarded copies to the United Nations refugee agency.

However, on Christmas Day, Equatorial Guinea authorities restrained him and placed him on an outbound flight.

“He alerted (authorities) to the fact that he had applied for asylum, and we contacted the U.S. Embassy in Malabo about his case but didn’t receive a response,” Yoon said.

The UN refugee agency declined commenting on specific cases. Larissa Schlotterbeck, regional head of external engagement, said Equatorial Guinea is developing asylum procedures and UNHCR is assisting with identifying people needing protection meanwhile.

The Trump administration allocated at least $40 million for deporting roughly 300 migrants to nations other than their homelands, based on a February Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democratic staff analysis. Other African partners include South Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and Cameroon.

Equatorial Guinea obtained $7.5 million, Senator Shaheen revealed.

In correspondence to Secretary of State Marco Rubio obtained by AP, Shaheen called the “highly unusual payment” concerning regarding taxpayer money usage, noting it surpassed American foreign aid to Equatorial Guinea during the previous eight years.

Last year, the State Department granted temporary sanctions relief allowing Teodorin Obiang, son of Equatorial Guinea’s president and the nation’s vice president, to visit America. Obiang met with Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau.

Neither the State Department nor Equatorial Guinea officials responded to comment requests.

The 28-year-old asylum-seeker remains trapped in uncertainty. He considers this the most difficult aspect of his experience.

“Before, we were immigrants with hope,” he said. “But here, there is no more hope.”