– 2 entries
Trump Administration Third-Country Deportations to Equatorial Guinea
The U.S. paid Equatorial Guinea several million dollars under an October 2025 agreement to accept third-country deportees, most holding U.S.-granted humanitarian protections, who have been held in a converted hotel.
The US paid Equatorial Guinea $7.5 million under a Note Verbale dated October 2, 2025. At least 40 people have been forcibly sent across four flights (Nov 24 2025, Jan 22, Apr 29, Jun 18 2026), most with US-granted humanitarian protections, and held in a converted Malabo hotel.
2026 Events (1)
Deportees say ICE agents assaulted, restrained, and denied them medical care and bathroom access on Liberia deportation flight
On August 20, 2026, deportees said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents beat, restrained, and denied them medical care and bathroom access during a roughly 14-hour deportation flight from Louisiana to Monrovia, Liberia, the first of an expected 1,200 people to be sent to Liberia under a third-country deportation arrangement. Deportees said agents beat those who resisted, denied a Cuban national with a surgically repaired abdominal wound access to a toilet and later knelt on his abdomen on the tarmac, and held others for days without beds in an unheated room. The Department of Homeland Security denied several of these specific claims on the record but did not address most of the deportees' other allegations.
2025 Events (1)
United States paid Equatorial Guinea $7.5 million to accept deportees with US protections
The United States and Equatorial Guinea signed a Note Verbale dated October 2, 2025, under which the U.S. paid the authoritarian petrostate $7.5 million to accept deportees who could not be returned to their own countries. An Associated Press investigation published March 21, 2026 revealed the secretive deal and found that most of the at least 40 people eventually transferred there — including a 28-year-old East African refugee ICE agents allegedly beat after he refused to sign a voluntary-return document — had already been granted U.S. legal protection against removal home.