Six deportees who refused to leave US flight in Liberia sent to Equatorial Guinea

Six people deported by the United States to Liberia last week refused to leave the aircraft upon arrival, and were subsequently flown to Equatorial Guinea, according to a fellow passenger and a lawyer in contact with the group.

The incident occurred on Thursday, when the group — four Cuban men, a Brazilian man, and a Cameroonian woman — declined to disembark in Liberia, saying it was "not their country" and that they feared danger there. A Honduran deportee on the same flight said the six were then separated from the other passengers, who got off in Liberia out of fear of being forced.

Meredyth Yoon, litigation director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, said the resisting deportees were told they would be returned to the United States, but instead the plane took them to Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea. Yoon described the arrival as "heartbreaking and chaotic," with some individuals in chains and extreme distress, including the Cameroonian woman and one Cuban man who has a serious medical condition requiring regular care.

The six are now being held at a hotel in Malabo with about 40 other deported migrants. Yoon said there is no medical staff on site, conditions have worsened in recent months, food is sometimes withheld, and guards have been accused of threatening, beating, and choking some migrants.

Equatorial Guinea's government did not respond to a request for comment. The country is one of several with which the Trump administration has signed often-secret third-country deportation agreements, allowing the US to send migrants to nations they did not originate from. Advocates say this practice is used as a loophole to indirectly return some asylum seekers to countries they fled. Equatorial Guinea's president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, has turned the family-owned hotel into a detention site under an opaque $7.5 million deal with the administration.