Six deportees stranded in Equatorial Guinea after refusing to disembark in Liberia
The US deported a group to a fourth country after they refused to leave a plane in Liberia, now holding them in an African nation with no asylum framework.
What happened
On 20 August, six individuals—four Cubans, one Brazilian, and one Cameroonian—were placed on a US ICE deportation flight bound for Liberia without their knowledge or consent. When they refused to disembark in Monrovia, some allegedly assaulted by ICE agents, they were instead flown to Equatorial Guinea and detained at the Bamy hotel in Malabo. According to lawyers and NGO monitors, they are being held in inhumane conditions with restricted food access, no hygiene items or medical care, guarded by armed men, and unable to contact their families. This marks the first known instance of individuals being deported to a fourth country after refusing to disembark from a deportation flight. Nearly 60 other people, mostly African nationals, have been deported directly to Equatorial Guinea since November under a US-Equatorial Guinea deal secured by Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue (Teodorín), son of the country's long-ruling dictator. The US pays the deal $7.5 million.
Context
The deportations are part of Trump's second-term third-country deportation strategy, which has sent more than 23,000 people to 26 countries other than their own since last year, with Mexico receiving the bulk (over 19,000). Equatorial Guinea, governed by an autocratic regime with one of the world's worst human rights records, now hosts the most African deportees under this arrangement. Teodorín, who has been convicted of money laundering in France and investigated by the US Senate and Department of Justice for corruption, had previously been barred from entering the US but was granted a waiver to attend the UN General Assembly last year, when he negotiated this deal. The arrangement creates a legal trap: deportees cannot obtain asylum status in Equatorial Guinea because it has no legal asylum framework, leaving them in indefinite detention or forced to return to countries where US immigration judges previously determined they faced real risk of persecution, torture, or death. Immigration lawyers characterize this as a mechanism to circumvent asylum protections. The US Department of Homeland Security stated it is applying the law as written, while advocates argue the individuals have committed no crimes and are being held against their will without due process.
What's disputed
The exact treatment of deportees at the Bamy hotel and during the flight, including allegations of assault by ICE agents, is characterized as abusive by lawyers and NGO representatives but is not directly addressed in official statements. The legality and propriety of the fourth-country deportation is not disputed in fact but is implicitly contested through the framing of it as unprecedented and problematic by legal experts.