US judge orders Ahmed Soliman's return

A US federal judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to facilitate the return of Ahmed Soliman, a gay Egyptian man who was deported to Equatorial Guinea.

District Court Judge John Hinderaker said Soliman, 31, was a lawful permanent US resident and had been denied due process rights and the chance to argue that he could face abuse and torture in Equatorial Guinea.

Hinderaker said that since his deportation, Soliman had been held under armed guard, threatened at gunpoint, and arrested, beaten and held incommunicado by Equatorial Guinean authorities.

Soliman came to the United States in 1998, when he was four years old, and lived in Arizona. He was convicted in October 2023 of aggravated assault and drug possession and sentenced to two and a half years in prison.

The Department of Homeland Security placed him in removal proceedings in January 2024. A judge barred his deportation to Egypt because of concerns that he could face persecution there because of his sexual orientation, but Soliman was sent to Equatorial Guinea in April.

Soliman's lawyers called Hinderaker's order a "powerful affirmation" that due process does not end when the government sends someone to a third country.

The Trump administration has defended third-country deportations as necessary when some home countries refuse to accept people targeted for removal. The US Supreme Court last month lifted restrictions on deportations of undocumented migrants to countries that are not their own.