Lawsuit challenges US ‘third-country’ deportations to Equatorial Guinea

An international coalition of lawyers has filed a lawsuit with a top African human rights body seeking to block deportations to Equatorial Guinea from the United States.

The lawsuit filed on Friday against Equatorial Guinea at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights specifically targets a so-called “third-country” agreement between the West African nation and the administration of US President Donald Trump.

Under the policy, the US can deport to Equatorial Guinea individuals who cannot safely be sent to their home countries. The practice has been widely condemned for sending deportees to countries with dismal rights records where they have no ties and often do not speak the language.

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of 14 deportees. They included some still being held in Equatorial Guinea under conditions “amounting to arbitrary and indefinite detention”, according to the indictment.

Six of those represented in the complaint had already been forcibly repatriated from Equatorial Guinea within the last week, despite expressing fear of persecution or ⁠torture, according to the human rights groups representing them.

Three of those had been ⁠sent back to Equatorial Guinea after their home countries refused to accept them. Lawyers said they had lost contact with the other three.

The groups included the US-based groups Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Global Strategic Litigation Council and EG Justice, along with Gambia’s Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa and the Tanzania-based Pan African Lawyers Union.

The complaint asks that ⁠the commission, which assesses rights compliance with the African Charter, to suspend further repatriations and guarantee that deportees have access to lawyers, among other provisional measures.

The Gambia-based commission could hear the case or refer it to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, based in ‌Tanzania.

About 32 people are thought to have been deported to Equatorial Guinea since last year, according to AFP, but the total is unknown.

The US State Department in its 2024 human rights report, cited “credible reports” of “torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” in Equatorial Guinea, among other “significant human rights issues”.

The Trump administration, which has overseen a mass deportation drive, has defended “third country” deportations as lawful and part of a strategy “to end illegal and mass immigration and bolster America’s border security”.