The Trump administration has begun taking steps to return an Egyptian man to the United States after deporting him to Equatorial Guinea, a rare reversal in a case that a federal judge said violated the man's constitutional right to due process.
In court filings submitted Friday, the administration said it is working "collaboratively" with attorneys for Ahmed Soliman to locate him and reestablish contact, and is "beginning the process to facilitate" his return from the central African nation. The filing came from Timothy Courchaine, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona.
The development follows an order earlier this week from Arizona District Court Judge John Hinderaker, who directed the Department of Homeland Security to bring Soliman back to the United States and to explain how it intends to carry out that return. Hinderaker, an appointee of President Trump, found that DHS had violated Soliman's due process rights when it carried out the deportation.
Soliman's case drew attention because of the unusual and legally contested nature of his removal. He is gay and had previously obtained an order from a U.S. immigration judge blocking his deportation to his home country of Egypt, where he could face persecution because of his sexual orientation. Rather than send him to Egypt, the Trump administration deported him earlier this year to Equatorial Guinea, a country where he has no family, no community, and no prior connections.
The practice of sending deportees to nations other than their country of origin — often called third-country deportation — has become a central element of the administration's immigration enforcement strategy. The approach has generated mounting legal challenges from immigrants' rights advocates, who argue that it exposes vulnerable people to harm in countries they have never lived in and that it circumvents protections built into U.S. immigration law.
Equatorial Guinea is frequently cited by human rights organizations as one of the world's least free nations. Freedom House, a nonprofit that tracks democracy and human rights globally, ranks the country among the most repressive in the world, with severe restrictions on political opposition, press freedom, and civil liberties. The government has been led for decades by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who took power in a 1979 coup and has faced persistent accusations of authoritarian rule, corruption, and human rights abuses.
For Soliman, those conditions compound the danger. As a gay man, he had already been found eligible for protection from removal to Egypt, where same-sex relations can lead to prosecution and where LGBTQ people face widespread social discrimination and the threat of violence. Being sent instead to Equatorial Guinea — a country with its own criminalization of same-sex conduct and a poor human rights record — effectively placed him in a comparable or even more precarious situation, according to his legal team.
The Supreme Court weighed in on the broader policy in late September, ruling in favor of the Trump administration in a case concerning third-country deportations. That decision, which cleared the way for removals to countries with which deportees have no ties, set the legal backdrop for Soliman's case and others like it. Even so, the Arizona ruling shows that lower courts are still willing to scrutinize whether individual deportations satisfy basic constitutional requirements, particularly when the government has already determined that a person cannot safely be returned to their homeland.
Legal observers note that the administration's decision to comply, at least in principle, with the Arizona order may reflect its awareness that defying a direct court mandate carries serious risks. The filing describes an active effort to find Soliman in Equatorial Guinea, a logistical challenge given the country's limited diplomatic ties with the United States and the difficulty of tracking individuals once they are transferred to remote locations without support networks.
Immigration attorneys and advocacy groups say the case illustrates a pattern: the government moves quickly to remove people to third countries, but lacks a clear plan for monitoring them or addressing errors after the fact. Reversing a deportation is extraordinarily difficult in practice, requiring coordination across multiple agencies, foreign governments, and international travel systems. The fact that DHS has now committed to attempting it signals that the court found something more than a minor procedural defect.
The case also raises questions about how many other deportees may be in similar circumstances. Because third-country removals are often carried out with minimal public disclosure, it is unclear how many individuals have been sent to nations where they face persecution, lack legal status, or are unable to return to the United States despite court orders. Some advocates have called on Congress to require more transparency and reporting around such removals, arguing that current oversight is inadequate.
For Soliman, the immediate question is where he is and how soon he can be brought back. The government's filings suggest it does not yet know his exact whereabouts, which complicates the timeline considerably. His attorneys have pressed for prompt action, emphasizing that every day he remains in Equatorial Guinea carries potential risk given the country's human rights climate and his status as a gay man with no local ties.
If Soliman is successfully returned to the United States, his case could become a template for challenges to other third-country deportations. Courts may look to the Arizona ruling as precedent for requiring individualized assessments before removal and for holding agencies accountable when they disregard immigration judges' protective orders. The administration, for its part, has signaled that it intends to continue pursuing third-country removals despite legal setbacks, viewing them as a necessary tool in its broader enforcement agenda.
The outcome of Soliman's case will likely hinge on how quickly the government can locate him and arrange his travel, as well as whether any further legal obstacles arise. For now, the filing represents a rare acknowledgment by the Trump administration that a deportation it carried out may have been unlawful — and an unusual, if tentative, step toward undoing it.
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