Ahmed Soliman, a gay immigrant who spent nearly his entire life in Arizona, was arrested Friday in Equatorial Guinea after publicly describing alleged police violence inside the hotel where authorities had confined him. His attorneys fear the arrest was retaliation for speaking with journalists.

Soliman, 30, was transported to the island city of Malabo in April on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter flight. The Trump administration sent him there through its third country removal program, despite court protections blocking his deportation to Egypt.

“From the information we have, it looks like retaliation. It’s unclear what laws, if any, he’s actually broken,” attorney Kate O’Donnell told the Prospect. His legal team contacted the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees while local attorneys searched area jails without finding him.

“I’m just terrified as to what is happening to him right now, when nobody’s watching,” O’Donnell said. That fear carries particular weight in Equatorial Guinea, where Amnesty International has documented torture and disappearances inside prisons maintained by the authoritarian government.

Days before his arrest, Soliman shared videos and spoke with Reuters and the Prospect about an alarming September 3 confrontation. He said a police officer aimed an assault rifle at him and two other detained immigrants while a supervisor shouted, “Shoot him!”

After those accounts became public, authorities allegedly began moving through the hotel and confiscating phones from roughly 30 third country nationals. Soliman hid his phone and managed to call O’Donnell late Wednesday, but the conversation ended when someone began pounding on his door.

“He was really tense, I’d never heard him sound like that before,” O’Donnell said. Soliman told her, “I gotta go, I’ll call you back in ten minutes,” but he did not contact her again until the following day.

On Thursday, Soliman sent messages saying authorities had beaten the immigrants and shut down their internet access. Even while facing possible retaliation, he urged his attorney to continue publicizing what was happening inside the hotel.

“I can’t let the fire die down now. I need to keep adding fuel and I understand the risks for me and am willing to,” Soliman wrote. By Friday morning, O’Donnell learned from immigration advocate Meredyth Yoon that police had arrested him and that other immigrants had cuts and bruises and “were pretty shaken up.”

Soliman is especially vulnerable because homosexuality is effectively criminalized in Equatorial Guinea. His attorneys worry that authorities may exploit his sexuality, leaving him exposed inside a prison system already infamous for abuse and secret detention.

He arrived in the United States from Egypt at age four after the Egyptian government persecuted his father, a prominent Muslim scholar. Soliman grew up in Arizona and later struggled with drugs and alcohol while confronting shame and confusion surrounding his sexuality.

A 2021 conviction for causing an accident while driving under the influence cost Soliman his immigration status. After leaving prison in 2023, he was immediately transferred into ICE custody, where his attorneys continued seeking his release.

Federal court protections prohibited the government from deporting him to Egypt because of the danger connected to his sexuality and his family. Nevertheless, officials forced him onto a flight to Equatorial Guinea without identification, a temporary travel document, or the credible fear interview he says he requested.

Soliman said officials did not reveal his destination until he was being carried onto the aircraft. Describing his arrival in a nation where he had no meaningful ties or legal documentation, he said, “I came here as a ghost.”

The Trump administration has subjected more than 23,000 immigrants to third country deportations during his second term, according to Refugees International and Human Rights First. Rights organizations are challenging the removals in federal court, arguing that people are being shipped to unfamiliar nations without adequate legal process or protection.

At least 63 people have been expelled to Equatorial Guinea aboard six ICE charter flights since November, according to flight records compiled by the Prospect. More than half were later deported to their countries of origin even though United States courts had prohibited those removals.

ICE and the State Department did not answer requests for comment. A Department of Homeland Security representative instead repeated an earlier statement: “When an individual is no longer in ICE custody, then ICE will no longer be responsible for them.”

That bureaucratic shrug captures the cruelty of a system that moves human beings across continents and then pretends responsibility vanished when the plane landed. O’Donnell said immigrants raised in America were among those most willing to demand the rights they had always been taught were fundamental.

She called on Americans to show “deep outrage” and pressure elected officials to protect Soliman and the others trapped in Malabo. “This is the line,” she said. “This is beyond the pale.”