US judge orders return of Egyptian deported to Equatorial Guinea as HRW says Africa deportations are unlawful

A judge orders the return of a deported Egyptian

A US judge, John C. Hinderaker, ordered the Department of Homeland Security to facilitate the release of Ahmed Soliman from custody and his return to the United States, including arranging any travel documentation he would need, in a ruling seen by Reuters on Thursday. Soliman, an Egyptian man deported to Equatorial Guinea this year, has been jailed there. He told an immigration judge last year that he feared being killed in Egypt because he is gay. Last month he said he had faced rough treatment from Equatorial Guinean police, and video obtained by Reuters showed officers pulling firearms on migrants including him. Soliman has been held incommunicado at a gendarmerie station that has also been used to detain human rights activists. Equatorial Guinea has not responded to requests for comment on his case.

What the Human Rights Watch report found

Human Rights Watch says in a report published on Thursday that sending migrants to African countries where they are neither citizens nor habitual residents violates international law and is designed to deter migration through human suffering. HRW counts 536 people sent to such countries between January 2025 and August 2026, while other reports cite more than 500 based on US data. Its findings draw on interviews with 24 deportees in Cameroon, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini and South Sudan. HRW says at least 12 deportees identified as LGBT and were sent to African states that criminalize same-sex relations. A Forbidden Stories investigation published in September estimated that about 25,000 people had been deported worldwide under the programme.

Conditions during removal

Interviewees described being kept in chains during flights of up to 18 hours and not being told where they were going. Most had little or no time between being told of their expulsion and its execution, HRW says, and many could not contact family or lawyers. A 35-year-old Ethiopian man said an ICE officer signed a "voluntary departure" form to Chad on his behalf, and he found on arrival that the plane had landed in Cameroon. HRW says Eswatini, Ghana and South Sudan arbitrarily detained deportees, with ill-treatment reported in detention. It also says Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Ghana returned some deportees to their countries of origin despite the risk of torture or persecution.

Official responses

Michael Garcia Bochenek, the group's interim US programme director, put HRW's position directly.

Deporting people to countries where they have never set foot is part of a US policy designed to cause human suffering as a means to deter migration.

The Department of Homeland Security defended the practice in a statement to the BBC.

third country removals are an essential public safety tool that remove the most dangerous criminal illegal aliens from our streets.

HRW also cites an unnamed US official who told a Senate hearing that the administration could threaten people with being dropped in the middle of nowhere, and HRW concludes, "The point is to scare people." Eswatini, which welcomed 32 deportees, announced on Wednesday that three people from Yemen, Belize and Laos had voluntarily departed to their home countries. None of the African governments named has commented on the report.

Agreements and next steps

After Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, the administration signed agreements with governments in Africa, Latin America and the Pacific to receive people who cannot legally be returned to their own countries. Many of those agreements remain secret. HRW urges the African governments that signed them to suspend or rescind them and refuse such transfers, and calls on the United States to stop immediately the deportation of refugees and asylum seekers this way. For Soliman, the judge's order now requires DHS to arrange his return.