U.S. Flights Transfer Five Resisting Deportees to Equatorial Guinea

At least five individuals who had been slated for deportation from the United States to Liberia but declined to disembark were transferred to Equatorial Guinea on Thursday, as confirmed by a U.S. official and attorneys familiar with the matter.

This marks the inaugural documented instance of the administration’s third‑country deportation initiative, wherein migrants who refused to leave a flight bound for a nation with which they have no connections were subsequently routed to another such jurisdiction.

These deportees were part of an agreement whereby the Liberian government, in collaboration with the Trump administration, would accept up to 1,200 migrants for repatriation from the United States over the ensuing year.

The group included three Cuban men, one Brazilian national, and a Cameroonian woman, according to Alexandra Smolyar, an attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice Atlanta, which is representing migrants transferred to Equatorial Guinea under a separate deportation arrangement.

The individuals were escorted, in handcuffs, to a secluded hotel in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, a facility guarded by armed personnel and previously used to house other deportees, Smolyar reported. Their precise status as of Friday afternoon remained uncertain.

The Department of Homeland Security asserted that the migrants who resisted disembarkation in Liberia had been “deported to a safe third country,” though it declined to confirm whether Equatorial Guinea was the destination. The agency emphasized that it was “applying the law as written.”

The cohort, comprising 20 individuals flown from the United States to Liberia, refused to alight from the aircraft at Roberts International Airport in Monrovia. U.S. federal agents overseeing the deportees compelled the five dissenters to leave the plane, after which they were temporarily detained before being returned to the aircraft, according to three sources who requested anonymity.

Shortly afterward, they were flown to Equatorial Guinea.

“The situation is highly atypical — a sizable group refusing removal in one location and subsequently being relocated to another country,” remarked Claire Trickler‑McNulty, a former senior adviser at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She noted that she was unaware of any comparable case during the Trump era.

The agreement with Liberia represents one of the most substantial third‑country deportation arrangements yet pursued by the Trump administration, wherein individuals are expelled from U.S. territory but are initially not returned to their native nations.

Both ICE and the State Department face mounting pressure from the White House to identify locations for the deportation of migrants whom courts have deemed likely to encounter persecution or torture upon return to their home countries. In many instances, recipient nations receive financial incentives or other concessions in exchange.

Weeks before Equatorial Guinea announced its own agreement, the Trump administration temporarily lifted sanctions on its vice president, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, so that he could enter the United States for the U.N. General Assembly. The United States also wired $7.5 million to the country, federal data showed.

The Trump administration has concluded deportation agreements with more than 35 nations, according to Human Rights First, a nonprofit organization that monitors such transfers. Numerous of these partners are located in Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Ghana, and South Sudan.

Since November 2025, dozens of migrants not originating from Equatorial Guinea have been sent to that country, the nonprofit noted. Many subsequently were transferred “onward to the very places from which they fled,” despite protective U.S. court rulings, the group observed.

Legal scholars and practitioners have voiced concerns regarding the migrants’ awareness of their destination and the opportunity to voice fears or objections.

“It is deeply troubling that these individuals could be deported to Liberia and then, within hours, forced onto another flight bound for yet another third country — here, a fourth — without any notice that they might be headed to Equatorial Guinea,” Smolyar asserted.

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