Secretive deal leaves deportees from the US stuck in Equatorial Guinea with ‘no more hope’

DAKAR, Senegal — When a U.S. immigration judge told a 28-year-old East African refugee he was free to leave California detention after 13 months, he was elated. Although his request for asylum was denied, the judge ruled that he could not be expelled from his country because it would put him in danger.

“He said to me, ‘Welcome to the United States,'” the refugee told The Associated Press, which has seen his legal documents. “You are now protected by American law, so you can leave the center, work and stay in this country.”

But he was never released, instead being handcuffed and put on a flight to Equatorial Guinea, an authoritarian West African petrostate that signed a secret deal with the Trump administration and became a transit hub for deported migrants. It keeps him and others in detention and has no asylum policy.

He requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, saying he fled his country after being beaten, persecuted and imprisoned because of his ethnicity.

He is among 29 people deported to Equatorial Guinea, which the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jeanne Shaheen, called “one of the most corrupt governments in the world.”

America’s first pope, Leo XIV, who has criticized the Trump administration’s treatment of migrants as “extremely disrespectful,” will visit Equatorial Guinea in April.

At least seven African countries have signed agreements with the United States to facilitate expulsions of third-country nationals, which legal experts say is actually a legal loophole for the United States. Most of those deported received legal protection from U.S. judges protecting them from being sent back to their home countries, their lawyers said.

AP previously interviewed a gay asylum seeker from Morocco who was deported to Cameroon and, feeling she had no choice, agreed to be sent back to her home country, where homosexuality is illegal.

In a telephone interview, the 28-year-old refugee said authorities in Equatorial Guinea were pressuring him to return home even though he had filed an asylum application there, which the AP learned of.

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

But he said returning to a country ravaged by ethnic conflict was “not an option”.

The United States deports people to third countries “to circumvent laws that prohibit sending a person to a country where their life or liberty would be threatened,” said Meredyth Yoon, litigation director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, which has helped people deported to Equatorial Guinea.

She verified significant parts of the 28-year-old asylum seeker’s account.

“Once deported, these people face impossible alternatives: indefinite detention without access to a lawyer, or forced deportation to the very countries they fled,” she said.

The 29 people deported to Equatorial Guinea came from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mauritania, Angola, Congo, Chad, Georgia, Ghana and Nigeria, according to their guest lawyer, who requested anonymity given the country’s human rights record. He said authorities did not allow him to see most of them.

The 28-year-old refugee said he was deported in January. Before that, he said, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials pressured him to sign a document saying he wanted to return to his country voluntarily. He said they were surprised he could read it, and quoted one of them saying, “I never knew black people could read and write.” »

When he refused, he said he was transferred to Arizona, where he spent five months in a windowless room with several other people. Hygienic conditions in the facility were poor and it was “very difficult” to obtain medical care.

“A guy in my room went crazy and started screaming and hitting himself because he wanted to go home,” he said.

An immigration judge rejected his asylum request but granted him protection under U.S. law and the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which bar his return to his country but would allow his removal to a third country deemed safe.

“Everyone told me we were going back to Africa,” he recalls. “I needed to talk to my lawyer, but these ICE agents started using force, they started beating me. »

After transfers to California, Texas and Louisiana, he was handcuffed and taken to an airport in the middle of the night.

The plane belonged to Omni Air International, a charter airline, filled with people like him, he said.

When they landed, he discovered they were in Equatorial Guinea.

Asked about his case, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said ICE agents “did NOT beat, coerce, or use racial slurs” against him, adding that he was “an illegal alien” who “was treated as an expedited removal and was returned to Equatorial Guinea.”

“All these illegal aliens deported to Equatorial Guinea were given due process and were subject to a final order of expulsion,” they said.

The 28-year-old man and other deportees are being held in Malabo, the former capital.

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

Yoon said 17 detainees were returned to their home countries after being told there were no other options, and that there was no asylum policy in Equatorial Guinea.

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

A man who was returned to Mauritania told AP he still requested asylum from the prime minister’s office, according to documents seen by AP. The visiting lawyer said he had sent a copy to the United Nations refugee agency.

But on Christmas Day, authorities in Equatorial Guinea handcuffed him and put him on a plane.

“He alerted (authorities) that he had requested asylum and we contacted the US embassy in Malabo about his case, but we did not receive a response,” Yoon said.

UHNCR said it could not comment on individual cases. Larissa Schlotterbeck, head of external engagement in the region, said Equatorial Guinea is working to establish an asylum system and UNHCR is helping to identify people who may need protection until then.

The Trump administration spent at least $40 million expelling about 300 migrants to countries other than their own, according to a February report from Democratic staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Other African countries known to have signed agreements include South Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and Cameroon.

Equatorial Guinea received $7.5 million, Senator Shaheen said.

In a letter addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and obtained by AP, Shaheen said the “highly unusual payment” raised concerns about the use of taxpayer dollars, and noted that it exceeded U.S. foreign aid to Equatorial Guinea over the past eight years.

Last year, the U.S. State Department granted a temporary sanctions waiver to allow Teodorin Obiang, son of Equatorial Guinea’s president and the country’s vice president, to visit the United States. Obiang met with US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau.

The U.S. State Department and Equatorial Guinea authorities did not respond to requests for comment.

The 28-year-old asylum seeker remains in the dark. He called it the worst part of his ordeal.

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