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Two men deported from the United States to Equatorial Guinea were arrested by local police forces and transferred to a prison earlier this month, in apparent retaliation for speaking out about conditions they faced in the Central African country. Samson Birhane, who is from Eritrea, and Ahmed Soliman, a gay asylum seeker from Egypt, were both deported by the Trump administration despite U.S. immigration courts granting them protections.

On September 11, police forces arrived at Hotel Bamy in the city of Malabo, where more than two dozen people have been confined after their deportation from the United States to Equatorial Guinea, a country they have no ties to, as part of President Trump’s secretive “third-country” agreements. Birhane and Soliman say they were arrested and taken to prison for speaking out about the inhumane conditions endured by U.S. deportees at the hotel and threats by armed forces. While confined at the hotel, U.S. deportees have decried denial of medical care and legal assistance, and abuses they’ve described as psychological torture.

“Starting in November 2025, … the United States started this horrendous policy of sending immigrants not from Equatorial Guinea to Equatorial Guinea, a country that the U.S. knows very, very well that is a human rights violator,” says human rights lawyer Tutu Alicante. “The State Department reports that the U.S. has been putting out for the last three decades are consistent about the fact that Equatorial Guinea uses torture, uses incommunicado detentions, and often extrajudicial killings of people that it keeps in prison.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

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Amnesty International is calling for the release of two men deported from the U.S. to Equatorial Guinea. They were arrested by local police forces there and transferred to a prison earlier this month. The men are Samson Birhane, who is with — who is from Eritrea, and Ahmed Soliman, a gay asylum seeker from Egypt, who was living in Arizona when he was detained by ICE. Both of them were deported by the Trump administration despite U.S. immigration courts granting them protections.

On September 11th, police forces arrived at Hotel Bami in the city of Malabo in Equatorial Guinea, where more than two dozen men and women have been confined after their deportation from the U.S. This is a country, Equatorial Guinea, they have no ties to, part of a secretive so-called third-country agreement.

It’s believed the two men were arrested and taken to prison for speaking out about the inhumane conditions endured by U.S. deportees at the hotel and threats by armed forces. Just days before their arrest, video footage obtained by Reuters showed guards pointing their guns at a group of U.S. deportees inside the hotel after a Cuban man asked an officer to return his confiscated cellphone so he could contact his family and lawyer. This is Ahmed Soliman describing what happened that day. This was before his arrest. He’s since been taken to a prison in Malabo.

AHMED SOLIMAN: Yesterday morning, another detainee here has had his phone confiscated for about two weeks, and he went downstairs to speak to the officers to try to have them call the director in charge, who is also their boss. Like I said, he hasn’t had his phone for about two weeks. He hasn’t been able to talk to his loved ones, his family, his lawyers, which in turn is a violation of human right laws. We are not........

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