The Trump Administration May Have Just Lied to Judge About an ICE flight to Equatorial Guinea

This is a breaking story and will be updated.

Attorneys asked a judge to bar an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) charter flight from leaving Equatorial Guinea Friday unless their client was onboard in an emergency motion filed shortly after the aircraft landed on the island city of Malabo. An ICE official had told the judge in a sworn statement a day earlier that the flight to Equatorial Guinea had been canceled, a claim the attorneys called “plainly false.”

Flight data indicates the plane took off two hours and 30 minutes later, before the judge issued a ruling. 

Earlier this month, Arizona District Court Judge John C. Hinderaker ordered the Trump administration to return Ahmed Soliman—a 31-year-old gay Egyptian national—to the United States, ruling that his due process rights had been violated when he was expelled to Equatorial Guinea, a country he has no ties to, in April. In recent days, Soliman’s attorneys have filed several motions claiming the government was not complying with the order.

In a Wednesday motion, Soliman’s attorneys cited a story from the Prospect, which said documents the Prospect had obtained showed an Eastern Airlines plane chartered by ICE was scheduled to leave Alexandria, Louisiana, the next day, with planned stops in Senegal, Equatorial Guinea, Burundi, and the Central African Republic. The documents also showed the purpose of the flight to Equatorial Guinea was to expel 25 more third-country nationals there, with no stated plan to bring Soliman on board.

But the next day, ICE agent Andrea Chiriboga Villacis told the judge the flight to Equatorial Guinea had been canceled: “On October 22, 2026, ERO headquarters advised that the anticipated third-country removal mission to Equatorial Guinea had been cancelled. Therefore, that mission is not available as a means to transport Petitioner to the United States.”

That does not appear to have been true. Flight data shows the Boeing 767 aircraft landed in Malabo at 4:40 p.m. local time, 11:40 a.m. Eastern time.

“Because Defendants’ attestations were plainly false, Petitioner respectfully requests that the Court enjoin Defendants’ plane from departing Malabo without [Soliman],” the motion said. 

Flight data shows the plane has since taken off.

Activists in Louisiana watched from a distance on Thursday as dozens of shackled immigrants were loaded onto the plane at Alexandria International Airport. The plane took off about fours late, according to the documents obtained by the Prospect. 

The documents also indicated 25 “detainees” would be expelled in Equatorial Guinea, 30 in Burundi, and 100 in the Central African Republic. All three countries are confirmed third-country removal “hosts” in the Trump administration’s expanding network. 

At least 63 third-country nationals have been sent to Equatorial Guinea since last November via at least six ICE-chartered flights, where they have reported being beaten, threatened, held at gunpoint, and deprived of food, water, hygiene products, and medical care. In September, Soliman and another man were disappeared to a local jail for a month, after speaking with the media, including the Prospect, about the latest incident, in which a security officer was caught on video pointing an assault-style rifle at them and another man, while the officer’s supervisor shouted, “Shoot him! Shoot him!”

Soliman was injured in a car accident while he was being returned to the hotel two weeks ago, his lawyers said, and was hospitalized over the weekend due to a serious illness. 

Soliman “continues to suffer irreparable harm every day that he remains in Equatorial Guinea,” his attorneys said in the latest filing. “This is the very essence of irreparable harm.”

Update, October 23, 3:30 pm: This story has been updated to reflect the flight’s departure and Soliman’s lawyers’ motion.