Trump’s Own Judge Orders Him Brought Back: The U.S. Paid $7.5 Million So Ahmed Soliman Could Sit Under Gunpoint in Malabo

A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump has ordered the administration to bring back a man it removed from the country. John C. Hinderaker, a judge on the U.S. District Court in Arizona, ordered Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security must “take all reasonable steps within its power” to return Ahmed Soliman to the United States. The deportation violated his right to due process under the Fifth Amendment, Hinderaker wrote. Soliman had been unlawfully removed from the country and had suffered irreparable harm.

Soliman, 31, from Phoenix, came to the United States at age 4 after his family fled Egypt, where they had been persecuted because of their political activities. After a DUI in 2021, he lost his immigration status and spent 2.5 years in prison. There, he had confronted the “self-loathing” that, by his own account, had driven him into addiction; as a gay man from a conservative family, he had struggled with himself for years. His attorneys had won protection preventing his deportation to Egypt because of his homosexuality and his family’s history there.

The protection applied only to Egypt, not to the danger. In October 2025, immigration authorities at ICE ordered his deportation, and in April he was put on a plane without any opportunity to object. The destination was Equatorial Guinea, a country where homosexuality is effectively banned and where authorities are known for arbitrary detention and torture. Protected from Egypt, he was sent to a country where, as a gay man, he faced no less danger, except no court had reviewed it beforehand.

Washington paid to have people like him taken in. $7.5 million went to Equatorial Guinea so it would accept deportees whom Washington is not allowed to send back to their home countries because they face persecution there. The White House has spent around $40 million on such arrangements with dozens of governments, and roughly 25,000 people have been pushed into countries to which they have no ties. Many were passed on from there, others disappeared into detention. Soliman and dozens of others were placed in the decommissioned Hotel Bamy in Malabo, none of them with any roots in that country.

After he spoke about the conditions in the hotel, authorities issued an order for his arrest. Since then, he has been held without charges and without contact with the outside world. Images show armed guards pointing a weapon at him and another man inside the hotel. According to Amnesty International, he was then taken to an overcrowded prison and denied both food and access to legal counsel.

The unrebutted record, the judge wrote, shows that Soliman was “held under armed guard, assaulted, threatened at gunpoint, and most recently arrested, hooded, beaten, and held incommunicado, reportedly without food or water.” His family in Arizona, his attorney Jesse Evans-Schroeder said, was left with no certainty at all about whether he was safe or even still alive.

Read also our article: Our reporting shows: Protected in the U.S., sent into danger under Trump - 40 LGBT migrants deported to hostile third countries

The department showed little concern for any of it. Human rights organizations, journalists, Amnesty, and United Nations legal experts sounded the alarm. Arizona Representative Adelita Grijalva also spoke out. The agency publicly mocked a newspaper report as a “pathetic excuse for a sob story” and called Soliman and another detainee, Samson Birhane, “CRIMINAL ILLEGAL ALIENS with rap sheets a mile long.”

The law had loosened its grip shortly before. A federal court ruled the previous month that the department had to give deportees a real hearing on their fear of being sent to a third country. The Supreme Court put that order on hold and allowed the sudden deportations to continue, as they did in Soliman’s case. In December, it will hear the case DVD v. DHS. Hinderaker gave the administration three days to report on the effort to bring Soliman back and gave it 30 days to appeal. Soliman may still be sent to another country, but this time only after a serious review of his fear. When everyone heard about the ruling, they all broke down in tears of relief, Dana Camilleri said. An ordinary country does not need a judge to remind it of its own Constitution before people can feel that much relief. Our fight goes on.

To be continued ...