A police officer aimed a loaded assault rifle at unarmed immigrants expelled to Equatorial Guinea by the Trump administration in a chaotic incident on September 3 in which the officer’s supervisor ordered him to shoot, multiple cellphone videos show. It was the latest in a string of abusive incidents against the immigrants, none of whom had any previous ties to Equatorial Guinea and are now imprisoned in a hotel in the country’s isolated island of Malabo.
The immigrants, whose birth countries span from Honduras to Eritrea, have endured beatings, death threats, and denial of food, are afraid for their lives, and desperately want to leave, one of them told the Prospect the day after the incident, but because Immigration and Customs Enforcement flew them to Equatorial Guinea without any identification, they have no idea when, how, or even if they’ll ever be released.
“I’m fighting for my life,” said Ahmed Soliman, a 30-year-old man who has been trapped at the hotel since April and can be seen in the videos with his hands up and a weapon pointed at him.
Reuters was the first to report on the situation in Malabo.
The latest incident began on August 31, when Soliman and the 38 other third-country nationals imprisoned there at the time began a hunger strike to demand they be given travel documents, Soliman said. A day and a half later, on September 1, they were visited by a high-ranking official known to them as “the Director,” who convinced a majority of the group he would meet their demands if they called off the strike, which they did.
Because Soliman has been there for longer than all but one of the immigrant detainees, he said he knew the Director wouldn’t keep his word. Within hours, eight Ethiopians in their group were taken away and forcibly repatriated, despite some or all of them having legal protections barring their deportation there, he said. Flight data supports this claim.
Officers then confiscated some of the remaining immigrants’ cellphones—a common punishment, Soliman said, since it separates them from their only lifelines to the outside world.
On Thursday, a Cuban national went outside to demand the return of his phone from police officers stationed on the hotel’s front driveway. The interaction became heated, and Soliman said he went outside and started to film, prompting police to take his phone as well. Officers then pointed their guns at him, forcing him back inside, where still more officers trained their weapons on him.
In cellphone videos taken several minutes into the incident and shared with the Prospect, Soliman can be seen dressed in a white shirt and pants, kneeling with his empty hands raised in the air. A man in a black T-shirt stands between Soliman and the armed officers with his arms outstretched, as a woman’s voice shouts, “Shoot him! Shoot him!” One of the officers bends down on one knee and aims his assault rifle at the men. Other female-sounding voices can be heard shouting, “No no no!” and “What are you doing?”
Soliman said the man in the black T-shirt was a Cuban national who had arrived two weeks earlier and who had stepped in front of the officers “trying to shield me,” Soliman said. The woman shouting “shoot him,” he said, was a plainclothes police supervisor who had been a constant instigator of cruel treatment throughout his imprisonment. The other two shouts came from a Cameroonian woman and a Jamaican woman, he said.
The conflict ended when the Director arrived and “calmed everyone down,” Soliman said. He was given his phone back, but others are still having theirs withheld. His U.S.-based attorneys, who had contacted me when they couldn’t reach him and another client of theirs for several days, soon sent me the videos of the incident and connected me with Soliman.
Soliman told me he was scared of the retaliation he expected with the release of the videos, but that he was “willing to be scared,” because “now there’s video of them breaking their so-called diplomatic assurances.”
In federal court filings, the Trump administration has claimed third-country removals to Equatorial Guinea are legal due to “diplomatic assurances” from the local government that third-country nationals would not be tortured. But unlike other so-called “safe third country” agreements, the Trump administration has refused to release details of the agreement with Equatorial Guinea, either to the court or the general public.
In February, Senate Democrats released a report saying the State Department had paid Equatorial Guinea $7.5 million to take third-country nationals, from a humanitarian fund meant for refugee assistance. Equatorial Guinea is one of the most corrupt countries on the planet, according to Transparency International, in which its authoritarian leader, in power since 1979, and his circle of friends personally benefit from the nation’s vast oil reserves and punish anyone who opposes them.
At least 63 third-country nationals have been sent to Equatorial Guinea on six ICE flights since November 24, 2025, according to flight data and information I’ve compiled on the Third-Country Removal Tracker. Of 29 people expelled on the first two flights, Soliman said only one remained; the rest had been refouled to their countries of origin.
Soliman was born in Egypt but came to the United States with his family when he was four. Growing up in the Phoenix area in a conservative Muslim family was difficult, he told the Arizona Daily Star last month, because when he realized he was gay, he didn’t know how to process his feelings or tell his family. He turned to drugs, and in 2021 he caused an accident while driving under the influence. He was sentenced to two years in prison and was ready to turn his life around upon his release in 2023. Instead, he was taken into ICE custody.
His attorneys eventually won protections against deportation to Egypt under the Convention Against Torture, due to his sexuality and because he comes from a prominent political family that has been persecuted by the current regime. Due to his distinct last name, if he were forced back to Egypt it is unlikely he would even make it out of the airport before being detained by authorities, his attorney, Kate O’Donnell, told me. Several of his relatives have been imprisoned and tortured or disappeared.
In April, Soliman was suddenly moved to Alexandria, Louisiana, despite having a pending habeas petition in Arizona that should have barred his transfer. He had no idea he was going to be removed to Equatorial Guinea until he was being pushed across the tarmac toward the waiting airplane, he said. His requests for a credible fear interview and to speak to his attorneys were ignored, and during the 30-hour trip to Malabo, which he described as “treacherous,” federal agents refused to show him his travel documents, before eventually admitting they didn’t have any paperwork for him at all, he told me.
“I came here as a ghost,” he said.
ICE and the embassy for Equatorial Guinea in Washington did not respond to requests for comment. Representatives for the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security who did not identify themselves declined to respond to the allegations in the story, instead sending general statements that they will use all “legal” and “lawful” means to remove people from the country.
DHS followed up with this: “When an individual is no longer in ICE custody then ICE will no longer be responsible for them. This is common sense.” This is a fascinating dodge, because regardless of whether or not it’s common sense, it isn’t lawful. Both U.S. and international law prohibit removing someone to a country where they may face persecution or torture, or deporting someone to a country that will deport them to another place where they may face persecution or torture. That is why Soliman has been so focused on proving Equatorial Guinea’s “diplomatic assurances” are worthless.
At first, his imprisonment at the hotel was tolerable, more boring than anything else, but things began to change in July after a consortium of attorneys and human rights groups filed lawsuits against Equatorial Guinea in international courts on his and the others’ behalf. Meals started getting smaller. Staff refused to give the detainees more toilet paper, soap, and toothbrushes.
Soliman said he was beaten for the first time at the end of July, after talking to the Arizona Daily Star. His phone was taken away for the first time, and officers threatened him and others that they could be killed and buried out back, and no one would ever find their bodies. That had become “a pretty common threat,” he said.
There was another round of beatings and phone confiscations three weeks ago after Spanish-speaking immigrants in the group talked to Telemundo and Univision.
“The way we came here makes a lot of us feel like, yeah, we were smuggled. Our lives were played with for monetary purposes,” he said. “It’s just disheartening because we don’t know what the end goal is here.”
After this latest round of abuse, after having an assault rifle pointed at him, he said he feels more resolve than ever to speak out.
“I’m done being scared. I’m ready to leave,” he said, before pausing to admit, “Yeah, I’m scared, but I’m willing to be scared. I’m fighting for my life.”
