The Fort Worth Press - Lawsuit seeks to stop US 'third-country' deportations to Eq.Guinea

The complaint is to be lodged against Equatorial Guinea at the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, based in The Gambia, and also seeks to halt Equatorial Guinea's onward expulsion of the deportees to their home countries.

As part of US President Donald Trump's sweeping crackdown on immigration, he has expanded the type of people targeted for deportation, including those with legal protections against being sent home.

In cases where Washington is legally barred from sending people home directly, it has sent deportees to countries like Equatorial Guinea.

Equatorial Guinea has then held them without charge before deporting them to their countries of origin.

"The US is increasingly treating these protections as if they are a loophole that allows the US to enlist third countries to effectuate return," a statement from the five legal and human rights groups behind the lawsuit said.

Similar "third-country" deportation agreements have been struck by the United States across Africa and the world.

The complaint is being filed by US-based groups Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Global Strategic Litigation Council and EG Justice, along with Gambia's Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa and the Tanzania-based Pan African Lawyers Union.

Originally set to be filed Friday morning, the lawsuit was delayed so lawyers could update it with information from clients who they had lost contact with, the Global Strategic Litigation Council said.

It is expected to be filed Friday afternoon.

Tracing deportees as they are shuffled across borders in secret has been a recurring issue, lawyers have told AFP.

The complaint is being filed on behalf of 14 deportees, some of whom are currently held in Equatorial Guinea under conditions "amounting to arbitrary and indefinite detention", according to the lawsuit, seen by AFP.

Others have "already been forcibly removed by Equatorial Guinea to countries where they face a real risk of persecution, torture, sexual violence, imprisonment and death", the joint statement said.

The commission is being asked to order Equatorial Guinea to halt the "deportation, transfer or removal" of those it is currently holding, as well as guarantee them legal and medical access, which are currently being withheld, according to the complaint.

A small petrostate in central Africa, Equatorial Guinea has been under the authoritarian rule of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo since 1979.

Some 32 people are thought to have been sent to Equatorial Guinea since last year, all African.

Neither the United States nor Equatorial Guinea have made the actual number of deportees, or the terms of the $7.5-million deal for Equatorial Guinea to take them, public.

S.Palmer--TFWP