{"id":818,"date":"2026-09-11T16:47:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T16:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=818"},"modified":"2026-09-11T16:47:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T16:47:16","slug":"immigrant-trump-sent-to-african-hotel-prison-arrested-after-speaking-with-media-lawyers-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=818","title":{"rendered":"Immigrant Trump Sent to African Hotel Prison Arrested After Speaking With Media, Lawyers Say"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ahmed Soliman, a 30-year-old gay immigrant from Egypt who had lived in Arizona since he was a child, was arrested by police in Equatorial Guinea Friday, days after speaking to reporters about police abuse, his lawyers said. Soliman, who spent nearly all of his life in the United States, had been imprisoned in a hotel on the island city of Malabo since April, where he was flown on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter flight as part of the Trump administration\u2019s third-country removal program.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s Disastrous Reign Will Cost You More Than $5,000<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the information we have, it looks like retaliation. It\u2019s unclear what laws, if any, he\u2019s actually broken,\u201d said Kate O\u2019Donnell, one of his U.S. attorneys, in a phone interview with the Prospect<\/em> Friday morning. She said they had contacted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and that local attorneys were looking for him in local jails but had not found him yet.<\/p>\n

More from Gillian Brockell<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just terrified as to what is happening to him right now, when nobody\u2019s watching,\u201d O\u2019Donnell said.<\/p>\n

Soliman had done interviews and shared videos with international media, including Reuters and the Prospect<\/em>, about an incident on September 3 in which a police officer pointed an assault rifle at him and two other immigrants imprisoned at the hotel, while the officer\u2019s supervisor shouted, \u201cShoot him!\u201d<\/p>\n

After the stories were published, Soliman and a Brazilian man who is also represented by O\u2019Donnell\u2019s law firm sent text messages saying authorities were going room to room confiscating the phones of the approximately 30 third-country nationals currently imprisoned at the hotel.<\/p>\n

Soliman managed to hide his phone and briefly called O\u2019Donnell late Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was really tense, I\u2019d never heard him sound like that before,\u201d she said. \u201cSomeone started knocking on the door, and he said, \u2018I gotta go, I\u2019ll call you back in ten minutes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t hear from him again until Thursday, when he texted her that authorities at the hotel had beaten all of them and cut off internet access. In his last messages to her, he told her to keep talking to the media, regardless of the retaliation he was facing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t let the fire die down now. I need to keep adding fuel and I understand the risks for me and am willing to,\u201d he wrote in a message shared with the Prospect<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Early Friday, O\u2019Donnell heard from Meredyth Yoon, litigation director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice, who has become an advocate for dozens of third-country nationals expelled to African countries since last year. Yoon told O\u2019Donnell she\u2019d learned Soliman had just been arrested, and that the other immigrants had cuts and bruises and \u201cwere pretty shaken up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Data Center of Attention<\/a><\/p>\n

The authoritarian government of Equatorial Guinea maintains prisons on Malabo notorious for torture and disappearances, according to Amnesty International. O\u2019Donnell said she is particularly afraid Soliman\u2019s sexuality could be used against him, because homosexuality is de facto criminalized in the country.<\/p>\n

Soliman came to the United States from Egypt with his family when he was four, after his father, a prominent Muslim scholar, was persecuted by the government. He grew up in Arizona, where he said he turned to drugs and alcohol as a young man to deal with feelings of shame and confusion about his sexuality. He lost his immigration status after a 2021 conviction for causing an accident while driving under the influence. Upon his release from prison in 2023, he was taken into ICE custody.<\/p>\n

His attorneys had won court protections barring his deportation to Egypt, due to his sexuality and the still-serious threat to his family, but had not yet secured his release from ICE detention. In April, he was forced onto a charter flight and taken to Equatorial Guinea. Soliman and his attorneys say he wasn\u2019t told where he was going until he was being carried onto the plane, that he requested and was denied a credible fear interview, and that he was removed without identification\u2014not even a temporary travel document.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came here as a ghost,\u201d he told me over the phone on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has subjected more than 23,000 immigrants to so-called third-country deportation in his second term, according to Refugees International and Human Rights First. Immigration rights groups have challenged the legality of these removals in federal court and expect a decision any day now. At least 63 men and women have been expelled to Equatorial Guinea on six ICE charter flights since last November, according to the flight data and other information I\u2019ve compiled on the Third-Country Removal Tracker. More than half have been deported to their countries of origin, despite all having U.S. court protections prohibiting this.<\/p>\n

ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but on Wednesday, for the Prospect<\/em>\u2019s story about the gun incident, a representative for DHS who did not identify themselves said, \u201cWhen an individual is no longer in ICE custody then ICE will no longer be responsible for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Donnell said that of the 30 immigrants at the hotel, about eight of them grew up in the United States, and because of that, \u201cthey were the ones who were most vocal \u2026 they were the ones that were demanding that their rights be respected.\u201d<\/p>\n

She thought about that again this morning, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything about the way Ahmed and his fellows have been treated, from the time that they were\u2014in Ahmed\u2019s case, physically picked up off the ground when he was asking for his fear interview, invoking his rights under international and domestic law\u2014everything that has happened to them has been in violation of the rights that Ahmed and others and all of us grow up believing that we have,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She said she hoped every American would feel \u201cdeep outrage\u201d about the way Soliman and the others sent to Equatorial Guinea were being treated and demand their elected officials uphold their rights.<\/p>\n

Read more Why OpenAI Hired Chuck Schumer\u2019s Daughter Away From Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the line,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is beyond the pale.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Ahmed Soliman\u2019s attorneys fear he may have been sent to one of Equatorial Guinea\u2019s notorious torture prisons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":817,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america-and-the-world"],"yoast_head":"\nImmigrant Trump Sent to African Hotel Prison Arrested After Speaking With Media, Lawyers Say - Frontier Housing Report<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/frontierhousingreport.com\/?p=818\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Immigrant Trump Sent to African Hotel Prison Arrested After Speaking With Media, Lawyers Say - 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