UN Experts Call on Equatorial Guinea to Stop Accepting US Deportees

Human rights experts at the United Nations issued a public appeal to Equatorial Guinea on Wednesday urging it to halt plans to return US deportees. The UN statement was cosigned by a representative of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights. 5m to take in third-country nationals as part of deals with at least 25 countries including Panama, Costa Rica, Eswatini and Cameroon.

A Supreme Court ruling last summer cleared the way for the US government to send deportees to South Sudan. The Trump administration has made similar arrangements with nations that include El Salvador, which agreed to incarcerate US deportees, resulting in more than 250 Venezuelan nationals being held in a Salvadoran megaprison for four months last year.

US security officials in Equatorial Guinea presented nine US deportees with salvo-conductos, or temporary travel documents, and told them they would be deported imminently to their home countries.

On Saturday, officials told a woman using the pseudonym Esther and at least eight others that they would be expelled. Lawyers are advocating for at least 28 people sent to Equatorial Guinea who had been granted protections under US immigration laws or the Convention Against Torture.

Esther landed in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, weeks ago after US officials declined to tell her her destination until she boarded the flight.

She had been arrested by ICE during a routine check-in appointment, denied access to her lawyer, moved to Louisiana, shackled, and placed on a plane to Equatorial Guinea. She spent 14 months at a US immigration detention center before being granted withholding of removal. Esther has been detained in a hotel in Malabo under conditions she described as not unlike a prison.

She has been confined to a hotel room guarded by armed officials, with access to the outside world only through her window and a retained cell phone. Lawyers were blocked from delivering phone chargers, soap, fresh clothes and pads; she later received a charger and pads but continues wearing the same clothes from her US arrest.

She has been unable to get medication for the flu or treatment for pain in her hands and ankles from being shackled.

Esther fled her home country in 2024 after being arrested and tortured at the behest of government officials. Two years ago, authorities in Esther’s home country arrested and disappeared her father, then arrested, beat and starved her until she was near death.

Equatorial Guinea had already refouled several of the deportees, including a West African man persecuted for his sexual orientation who is now in hiding.

Esther has been able to call her uncle and her mother from detention. “I know what awaits me if they send me where they want to send me. I will be locked up, I will be in jail,” she said. “Equatorial Guinea should never be treated as a safe country for migrants or asylum seekers.

This is a highly repressive authoritarian state,” said Tutu Alicante. Beatrice Njeri stated that the agreements were conducted in a “secretive” manner and that clients like Esther had been granted protection in the US including survivors of female genital mutilation, women subjected to sexual violence, LGBTQ+ persons, and individuals facing political or religious persecution.

” In September, the United Nations human rights office called on Ghana to stop the removal of migrants sent there from the US to their home countries where they faced torture.

The UN and African Commission human rights experts stated they were alarmed by the Trump administration’s tactic of expelling migrants, including asylum seekers, to third countries without arrangements for their long-term safety. Bella Mosselmans stated: “What we are seeing in Equatorial Guinea is not an isolated issue.