US transferred 65 court-protected refugees to Equatorial Guinea, groups say

US repurposed $7.5M in refugee aid to pay Equatorial Guinea

The Trump administration has transferred at least 65 third-country nationals to Equatorial Guinea since November 2025, even though US immigration judges had granted protection to nearly all of them, according to EG Justice and Human Rights First. The two organizations said the $7.5 million in repurposed US foreign assistance to Equatorial Guinea — a 275 percent increase — is funding detention of refugees in the country, including at a hotel in the capital, Malabo, and that several of those transferred have been sent back to the countries they originally fled.

The disclosure comes as the US Supreme Court has intervened to allow third-country deportations to continue while it considers a legal challenge, and as Equatorial Guinea’s vice-president — whose corruption the US previously pursued through forfeiture actions — has met with senior US officials in New York. The arrangement uses funds originally appropriated by Congress for humanitarian refugee assistance, the organizations said.

The Guardian reported the allegations in an opinion column by Tutu Alicante, founder and executive director of EG Justice, and Uzra Zeya, president and CEO of Human Rights First. According to their account, one of the transferred men — a 26-year-old identified only as Adam, who has not shared his real name or country of origin out of fear for his safety — has been confined to a room at the Hotel Bamy in Malabo for nearly a year, under constant watch by Equatoguinean security officers and soldiers. Not long ago, they barged into his room, handcuffed and beat him, and warned him not to tell anyone, the column said. There is no cell to point to, no charges or formal sentence, and nothing on paper documenting his confinement.

Adam fled his home country after enduring abuse during military service and facing forced indefinite conscription, the column said. A US immigration judge heard his case, found he would probably face persecution if returned, and issued a formal order shielding him from removal. In November 2025, the US placed him on a 13-hour-and-10-minute flight he was told would take him to another US detention facility. Midway through, while shackled, he learned the flight was bound for Equatorial Guinea — a country he had never visited. The most recent State Department human rights report states that torture reportedly occurs in every prison in Equatorial Guinea, the organizations noted.

The $7.5 million the administration repurposed in November to pay Equatorial Guinea to accept third-country nationals represents, according to the column, a 275 percent increase in foreign assistance to the country and a departure from longstanding US policy against direct provision of aid to what the column describes as a “deeply corrupt and abusive regime.” The funds were originally appropriated by Congress for humanitarian assistance to refugees, the column said, and are now being used to detain and shackle refugees and, in some cases, to send them back to the countries they fled.

In recent weeks, police in Equatorial Guinea assaulted and arrested two refugees in retaliation for speaking out about detention conditions and police violence, according to witnesses and lawyers cited in the column. The two are Ahmed Soliman, an Egyptian man from Arizona who has lived in the United States since he was three years old, and Samson Birhane. As of the column’s publication, both remained in police custody, detained incommunicado.

The column described Equatorial Guinea’s government and ruling family as “among the most corrupt on earth.” About a decade ago, the US Department of Justice settled a civil forfeiture case against the country’s vice-president, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, known as “Teodorín,” who forfeited a $30 million Malibu mansion, a Ferrari, and Michael Jackson memorabilia, the column said. The UK government imposed sanctions on Teodorín in 2021.

The Trump administration has taken the opposite approach, the column said. Last September, the administration paused corruption-related visa restrictions that had prevented Teodorín from traveling to the United States, clearing the way for him to meet with Christopher Landau, the US deputy secretary of state, before the deportation deal was finalized. Beyond the funds, the column said, the deal affords Teodorín something he has long sought: legitimacy and access in Washington. The organizations said Teodorín was back in New York last week, meeting Landau again at the United Nations to discuss what the government of Equatorial Guinea described as an expansion of bilateral cooperation in banking, trade, investment, security, and diplomacy.

The African Commission on Human and People’s Rights issued an emergency ruling in July ordering Equatorial Guinea not to send people back to danger in their home countries, the column said. The government has ignored the ruling and has sent at least four people back since then. EG Justice is challenging Equatorial Guinea’s participation in the US deportation scheme before the African Commission while working with local attorneys to offer legal and humanitarian aid, the column said.

In the United States, Human Rights First and partner organizations successfully challenged the third-country deportation policy in federal court, but the US Supreme Court has intervened to allow rapid third-country deportations to resume while it rules on the case, the column said. Human Rights First also runs the ICE Flight Monitor platform, which the column said tracks hidden deportation flights to Equatorial Guinea and elsewhere, and, with Refugees International, has documented US third-country forced transfer agreements with 35 countries.

Adam has been ill with malaria and typhoid fever since November, the column said. A second asylum claim his lawyers filed with Equatoguinean authorities in January remains in indefinite limbo; the judge hearing the case told local counsel that he does not have authority over it because the vice-president is in charge of such cases. A habeas corpus petition remains unanswered. Guards have told him repeatedly to “go back to your country,” the column reported — the very outcome a US judge had already ruled would put him at high risk of persecution.

Alicante and Zeya said they are pressing for coordinated Magnitsky-style sanctions against senior Equatoguinean officials, including Teodorín, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the European Union simultaneously, building on the evidentiary dossier that led to the UK sanctions. They called on Congress to use its oversight authority to end the misappropriation of migration and refugee resettlement funds, which they said are being used to finance arbitrary detention and chain refoulement and, in effect, to reward torturers.

“Adam and everyone held at Hotel Bamy should be released and given the chance to have their asylum claims heard in a country capable of hearing them, or returned to live safely in the United States,” Alicante and Zeya wrote. “They deserve the protection that was promised to them and is enshrined in US and international law.”