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A federal judge has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to return Ahmed Soliman to the United States, five months after he was expelled to Equatorial Guinea, a country where he has no ties, in a decision that could have far-reaching implications for thousands of others subjected to the Trump administration’s third-country removal scheme.
Arizona District Court Judge John C. Hinderaker, a Trump appointee, ruled that DHS violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment and “must facilitate Plaintiff’s release from custody in Equatorial Guinea and return to the United States and must ensure his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to Equatorial Guinea.”
Soliman has been held incommunicado by Equatorial Guinean authorities since September 11 after speaking to media, including the Prospect, about poor conditions at the hotel where he and dozens of other third-country nationals had been imprisoned for months.
Dana Camilleri, one of Soliman’s attorneys, said they are cautiously optimistic.
“Our reaction was relief and hope that he’s going to be able to come home and reunite with his family,” Camilleri told the Prospect. “I also am still thinking of everyone who’s confined at the hotel there and wanting to get them home. It’s a great step forward, but I’m a little cautious, honestly.”
Camilleri noted that DHS can appeal to the Ninth Circuit. DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
News about the order was first reported by the Arizona Daily Star.
“Our reaction was relief and hope that he’s going to be able to come home and reunite with his family,” one of Soliman’s attorneys told the Prospect.
Soliman, 31, was born in Egypt but came to the U.S. with his family when he was four years old. He lost his immigration status after a 2023 conviction relating to a car accident he caused while driving under the influence. In interviews, Soliman said he’d turned to drugs as a teenager after being raised in a conservative religious family and realizing he was gay.
ICE ordered him to be removed in October 2025, but his attorneys had won protections for him barring removal to Egypt, based on his sexuality and because his family had been persecuted by the government there. Relatives in Egypt with the same unique last name have been tortured, imprisoned, and disappeared, his attorneys said.
After months in ICE custody in Arizona, where he had an active habeas case, Soliman was abruptly moved to Louisiana in April. He has consistently maintained that he was only informed where he was being removed to minutes before he was forced onto a chartered ICE flight, and that when he immediately asked for a credible fear interview, his request was ignored. When he asked to see his passport or travel document, federal agents refused, before eventually admitting they didn’t have any.
“I came here as a ghost,” Soliman told the Prospect last month.
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In the latest court filing, ICE officials did not deny any of his claims, and appeared to confirm at least one of them, saying the charter flight’s manifest—a printed receipt given to pilots listing all passengers and crew on a flight—“served as the travel document.”
In his ruling, Judge Hinderaker focused on this interaction and the lack of “any process” for Soliman to raise concerns about removal to Equatorial Guinea. DHS has maintained that since Equatorial Guinea provided blanket “diplomatic assurances” to the State Department that immigrants sent there would not be harmed, an individualized process was not necessary.
“The Court finds this insufficient to abide by due process prior to removing Plaintiff to a third country,” Hinderaker wrote.
In Equatorial Guinea, Soliman was imprisoned in a government-owned hotel with dozens of other third-country nationals and pressured to return to Egypt. Armed guards have subjected them to threats and beatings, have withheld food, toothpaste, and toilet paper, and even turned the water off for days at a time, he said. The abuse got worse after Soliman began speaking with journalists in July.
In a September 3 incident captured on cellphone video, an Equatorial Guinean police officer pointed an assault rifle at Soliman (kneeling in white) and two other men while the police supervisor repeatedly shouted, “Shoot him!”
Days after Reuters and the Prospect published stories about the incident, witnesses say Soliman and another man, Eritrean national Samson Birhane, had bags placed over their heads and were handcuffed and taken from the hotel. They have been held incommunicado ever since. Attorneys believe they’ve been held at a local police station, and that Soliman was hospitalized last week for an unknown reason, Camilleri said.
Justice Department lawyers argued that since Soliman is covered by the class action case known as D.V.D. v. DHS challenging Trump’s third-country removal scheme, and since the Supreme Court has allowed the scheme to continue while it considers the case, Soliman should not be permitted to make an individual claim. The judge rejected this argument.
Camilleri said she became aware of another case last month in which a third-country national was ordered to be returned to the U.S. and decided to give it a shot. Now, she said, she hoped more attorneys would consider filing similar claims.
“I understand that all of us with clients in these third countries in very precarious situations are nervous about filing these claims, but between this and [the other case], I would like to see many more of these filed to try to get these people back to the United States, where they can have their due process that they are owed.”
At least 63 third-country nationals have been expelled to Equatorial Guinea on six ICE flights since last November, according to flight data and reporting I’ve compiled on the Third-Country Removal Tracker. As of mid-September, when guards at the hotel cut off their contact with the outside world, about 30 remained imprisoned there. The rest have all been forced back to their home countries, except for one woman, who was able to escape to Europe.
Justice Department attorneys must notify the judge within three days of their progress in returning Soliman to the U.S., according to the order.
