Equatorial Guinea

Between November 2025 and June 2026, the U.S. government conducted four deportation flights to Equatorial Guinea, removing a total of 40 individuals of various nationalities, many of whom had previously been granted withholding of removal or protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) by U.S. immigration judges. The first flight arrived on November 24, 2025, carrying nine men from Georgia, Mauritania, Angola, Ghana, and Eritrea who were misled into believing they were merely transferring to another domestic facility; a second flight on January 22, 2026, carried 20 more protected individuals (six women and 14 men) from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mauritania, Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Chad, with all 29 individuals from these first two flights subsequently detained at a local hotel. A third flight arrived on April 29, 2026, carrying two Cameroonians and one Egyptian, followed by a fourth flight on June 18, 2026, removing eight individuals, including two Jamaican women and six men from Senegal, Eritrea, Ethiopia, the DRC, and Uganda.

Under Equatorial Guinea’s immigration law, the detention of foreign nationals must not surpass 60 days, during which authorities must determine whether individuals will be returned to their countries of origin or granted international protection under applicable treaties. Although the people forcibly transferred to Equatorial Guinea explained that they had been granted protection in the United States, authorities informed them that asylum was not available in Equatorial Guinea. The Equatorial Guinean authorities indicated that they would be returned to their countries of origin once travel documents were obtained unless an alternative country could be found.

In May 2026, the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner raised concerns regarding the risk of refoulement for individuals detained in Equatorial Guinea with withholding of removal. Days later, these individuals were refouled back to persecution from Equatorial Guinea. In total, the 29 individuals from the first two flights have all been forcibly sent back to their countries of origin. Among the individuals forcibly returned to their home countries on the first flight was Diadie Camara, a Mauritanian man who had escaped hereditary slavery. Despite securing support from civil society actors in Equatorial Guinea to submit an asylum application, Camara was repatriated to Mauritania via Morocco on December 25, 2025, and has since gone into hiding to avoid being found and punished by the family that enslaved him. Another individual sent back to his home country was a gay man from Ghana who had previously been granted withholding of removal by a U.S. immigration judge due to persecution over his sexual orientation. Facing severe threat of violence from both local authorities and his community, he has since fled Ghana and is currently in hiding in another country that also criminalizes LGBTQ+ individuals.

A Note Verbale concerning the agreement with Equatorial Guinea became available on the State Department website in June 2026. The agreement, dated October 2, 2025, does not specify a cap on the number of transfers,  Equatorial Guinea reserves the right to accept or reject the transfer of an individual. As described above, the treatment of third country nationals pursuant to this agreement belies its assurances that the government of Equatorial Guinea “intends to treat any third-country national transferred from the United States  in a manner consistent with its obligations under” the UN Convention and Protocol on the Status of Refugees; the OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.In the agreement, the Equatorial Guinea asserts that “third country nationals transferred to Equatorial Guinea will not be subjected to persecution …, or to torture, in Equatorial Guinea or in any other country to which the Government of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea may subsequently transfer them.” Since many of the third country nationals removed to Equatorial Guinea have since been repatriated to the very countries from which they were granted withholding of removal or CAT protections, it is clear that general diplomatic assurances of compliance with treaty obligations secured for these third country agreements cannot be relied upon to ensure non-refoulement.

The forced transfers to Equatorial Guinea are part of DHS’s broader practice of deporting individuals with final orders of removal, particularly those granted withholding of removal or CAT protection, to third countries. In these cases, DHS sends people to third countries that were never identified as potential destinations during their immigration proceedings and without meaningful prior notice or an opportunity for the individuals to present a fear claim specific to the third country. This practice denies people due process and creates the risk that they will be sent to persecution and torture. It violates the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, Constitutional due process protections, and international treaty obligations codified in U.S. law including the prohibition on refoulement. This practice was challenged before a U.S. federal district court in Massachusetts in D.V.D.  v. DHS, leading the court to enjoin third country removals of people with final orders without notice or opportunity to raise a fear claim, but the Supreme Court stayed the injunction in June 2025 pending a decision on the merits. On February 25, 2026, the same federal district court declared unlawful and set aside DHS’s third-country removal policy, holding that DHS cannot deport individuals under final removal orders to countries not designated in their removal proceedings without providing meaningful notice and a genuine opportunity to seek protection from persecution or torture. The court rejected DHS’s position that it could transfer people to “so-called ‘third countries’” so long as it lacked specific prior knowledge that harm awaited them, explaining pointedly: “It is not fine, nor is it legal.” The Trump administration has appealed and the decision is stayed while litigation in the case continues.

The Trump administration concluded a deal through the U.S. Embassy in Malabo in October 2025, following earlier conversations with the vice president of Equatorial Guinea regarding accepting third country nationals in May 2025 that were continued on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York City in September 2025. The deal was made alongside negotiations over tariffs and U.S. company investment in Equatorial Guinea’s gas industry. In exchange for accepting third country nationals deported from the United States, the Trump administration gave the government of Equatorial Guinea $7.5 million of State Department funds that Congress appropriated for humanitarian assistance for refugees. As the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Minority Report notes, $7.5 million,“far exceeds all U.S. foreign assistance provided to the country over the last eight years combined. The money was directly provided to the Equatorial Guinea government, which had never before been done, outside of the United States giving some limited medical supplies. As of January 2026, Equatorial Guinea has received 29 third country nationals, the majority of whom it has quickly sent onward to their country of origin or intends to send onward. This raises the question as to why the money was needed in the first place and what Equatorial Guinea is doing with it.” 

This is especially troubling given the notorious corruption of Equatorial Guinea’s government. Because of numerous prosecutions for embezzlement of public funds and corruption in France, the United States, and Brazil, Equatorial Guinea’s Vice President Teodoro Nguema Obiang was barred from travel to the United States. However, the State Department provided him with a month-long sanctions waiver to allow him to travel to the UN General Assembly and meet with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Landau to discuss the deportation agreement. z

The Vice President’s father has ruled Equatorial Guinea since 1979 as an authoritarian regime that Transparency International currently ranks 173rd out of 180 countries for corruption. The State Department’s 2023 Human Rights Report states that “the president and members of his inner circle continued to amass personal fortunes from the revenues associated with monopolies on all domestic commercial ventures…” and that “corruption at all levels of government was a severe problem” in Equatorial Guinea. 

A civil society organization in Equatorial Guinea expressed concern that people deported there from the United States would suffer torture or inhumane and degrading treatment (potentially at the notorious Black Beach Prison or Oveng Ansen Prison) given the country’s record of “systemic illegal mass arrests, incarceration in squalid conditions, and denial of fundamental due process guarantees.” 

Equatorial Guinea has a history of arbitrary detention especially of foreign nationals according to the Global Detention Project: in late 2021, authorities arrested people on the basis of “African foreign facial features” and detained those who could not immediately produce identification. More than 500 people, including nationals from Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, the Central African Republic, Chad, and Mali, were detained across several cities. Few received legal assistance and many complained of beatings and were summarily deported to their home countries. In April 2022, Amnesty International called for the immediate release of four West African men who had been held in a Malabo police station since November 2021, far exceeding the 60-day limit under Equatorial Guinean law (Organic Law 3/2010), without access to legal procedures to challenge their detention. 

In a November 10, 2025 letter to Secretary of State Rubio, the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jeanne Shaheen pointed to the the State Department’s own 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report’s “significant concern” about government officials’ in Equatorial Guinea “complicity in trafficking crimes” and asked “what protections are in place to ensure that third country nationals removed to Equatorial Guinea are themselves not vulnerable to human trafficking, smuggling or human rights abuses.” Equatorial Guinea does not have any law for the granting of asylum or way for foreign nationals to apply for refugee protection and has a history of forcefully deporting Cameroonian people who have fled persecution back to Cameroon.

In June 2026, a group of NGOs filed a legal case in the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, accusing the government of Equatorial Guinea of refouling migrants sent there from the United States to their home countries, where they are at risk of persecution or torture. In July, a news outlet reported that hotels used to detain migrants were also being used to quarantine suspected Ebola patients following video evidence of medical personnel in full protective equipment transporting patients.