Two men deported to Equatorial Guinea by the Trump administration were allegedly hooded, bound, beaten with guns and pushed down stairs by police at a hotel where migrants are being held indefinitely, witnesses and lawyers have said.
The incident involving Ahmed Soliman, from Egypt, and Samson Birhane, from Eritrea, reportedly took place on September 11 at Hotel Bamy in Malabo. Both men were later arrested and taken to a detention centre, according to lawyers and the human rights group Amnesty International.
The hotel is holding 29 men and women from several countries, none of whom has been charged with an offence in Equatorial Guinea. The detainees have no legal status or documents allowing them to live or work there.
Witnesses said police officers placed burlap sacks over the men’s heads, tied their hands with rope and struck them with firearms before forcing them down a flight of stairs. The officers were said to have shouted: “Where is the phone? Where is the phone!”
The alleged assault followed the release of a video showing poor conditions at the hotel. Detainees had been using mobile phones to speak to journalists and lawyers about a lack of running water, adequate food and medical care, according to people familiar with the situation.
Police also searched rooms for phones, deportees said. Soliman and Birhane were arrested ostensibly over a broken mirror in the hotel lift, but their lawyers believe the arrests were retaliation for their attempts to publicise their treatment.
The men were held at a local jail and then disappeared for two days before being returned, their lawyers said. One lawyer who remained in contact with them said they had been denied food and were covered in bruises.
Conditions for deportees in Equatorial Guinea
Soliman, 31, had lived in the United States since he was three and previously held a green card. After he was sentenced to prison in 2023 for drug possession and aggravated assault, a judge ruled that he could not be sent back to Egypt because, as a gay man, he was likely to face torture there.
Birhane, 47, arrived in the United States as a refugee at the age of 13. He was deemed deportable after a second-degree robbery conviction in 1998, but a judge ruled that he could not be returned to Eritrea because of the risk of torture. He was later deported to Equatorial Guinea after being arrested during an immigration check-in.
American judges had ruled that most of those held at the hotel could not be returned to their home countries because they faced persecution or torture. The Trump administration ended a policy under which such people were often allowed to remain in the United States by default, and began seeking countries willing to accept them.
Equatorial Guinea is among the countries that agreed to receive deportees. It gave the United States a diplomatic assurance that the men and women would not be tortured or otherwise mistreated, but the detainees are being held without a clear legal status.
Four deportees interviewed in recent weeks described repeated intimidation by armed police officers. They said officers had stormed five rooms in July, grabbed residents by the neck and tackled them before pointing guns at them and threatening to kill them and bury them in a field unless they agreed to return to their countries of origin.
A video seen by lawyers showed a government official telling an Ethiopian man that his options were to “go back to your home country” or “go to prison”. Lawyers said at least a dozen people had already been returned to their home countries despite legal protections in the United States and the risk of abuse. Several have since disappeared or gone into hiding.
The hotel has also been described as lacking basic medical facilities. A local lawyer who visited recently said there were no medical supplies, despite detainees suffering from conditions including diabetes and a severe hernia. United Nations experts appealed to the Equatorial Guinean government in May for access to medical care and basic necessities.
Lawyers said the hotel had recently been used to quarantine a suspected Ebola patient, with videos showing health workers in protective suits apparently moving patients into the building.
Messages seeking comment from the government of Equatorial Guinea and the US State Department were not answered. In court documents, the Trump administration has argued that it cannot control what a foreign government does once a person has been deported.
Lawyers representing the detainees said appeals to the US ambassador in Equatorial Guinea and officials at the US embassy had also gone unanswered. On the day of the alleged beatings, the ambassador met the country’s vice-president, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who later spoke to White House adviser Stephen Miller about migration, according to a statement from the ruling party.
