Lawsuit filed to stop US 'third country' deportations to Equatorial Guinea

Central American migrants, part of a group of 87 people deported from the U.S., wait on a van at the El Chaparral border crossing before being transported to a shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, July 22, 2019. Yonhap

ABUJA, Nigeria — Lawyers filed a complaint Friday with Africa's top human rights body to halt U.S. deportations to Equatorial Guinea, which has served as a waystation for sending people back to countries where they fear persecution.

The complaint was 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 U.S. President Donald Trump's sweeping crackdown on immigration, he has expanded the scope of deportation targets to include 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 U.S. is increasingly treating these protections as if they are a loophole that allows the U.S. 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 was filed by U.S.-based groups Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Global Strategic Litigation Council and EG Justice, along with the Gambia's Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa and Tanzania-based Pan African Lawyers Union.

It was 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 complaint, 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 currently being held there, 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.