The plaintiff holds deferral of removal to Egypt under the Convention Against Torture. On 24 April 2026 he filed a habeas petition challenging his detention and seeking relief from third-country removal without notice. Before the court ruled, the defendants removed him on 28 April 2026 to Equatorial Guinea, a country not designated in his removal order and with which he has no ties. The court recorded that he “was not told his destination until shortly before the flight; when he asked for a fear interview, he was told it was too late, and he was carried onto the aircraft.”
In that habeas case the government filed the declaration of Vu Cam, an ICE Acting Unit Chief, who attested that “Equatorial Guinea provided diplomatic assurances that the aliens removed from the United States pursuant to the Third Country Removal agreement will not be subjected to persecution or torture,” that the Department of State had found them credible, and that ICE had followed the March 2025 Guidance in removing him. The plaintiff later dismissed that case and brought this civil action for declaratory and injunctive relief.
The court recorded, as unrebutted by the defendants, that on arrival he was handed to Equatorial Guinean authorities and held under armed guard, with other people sent from the United States, at the decommissioned Hotel Bamy in Malabo. On 2 July 2026 the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights requested provisional measures, including that Equatorial Guinea refrain “from transferring Plaintiff and thirteen other complainants against their will.” On 5 September 2026 police aimed rifles at him while he knelt with his hands raised. On 11 September 2026 Equatorial Guinean police arrested him and another detainee; witnesses reported that both men were “bound with rope, hooded, and beaten.” He “has since been held incommunicado at an unknown location, reportedly without food or water.” The record also showed that on 1 September 2026 a group of Ethiopian nationals who held United States protection against removal to Ethiopia were returned there “after an official asked whether they wanted to go to their country or to jail.”
The court held that the Supreme Court’s stay orders in D.V.D. did not resolve the merits of any individual claim, exercised its discretion to hear his claims although he appears to be a member of the D.V.D. class, and rejected the defendants’ arguments based on the first-to-file rule, res judicata and the jurisdictional provisions of 8 U.S.C. § 1252. The relief granted in D.V.D. was declaratory: “A declaration that class members are entitled to notice and an opportunity to be heard does nothing to secure the return of a class member who has already been removed without them.”
On the merits it relied on binding Ninth Circuit authority, including Andriasian v. INS (1999), recorded in this register. The defendants had identified no process the plaintiff received before removal, only the assurances: “But the assurance route is the absence of individualized process: it provides no notice of the country of removal and no opportunity to be heard.” It declared that his removal to Equatorial Guinea “without notice of the country of removal and a meaningful opportunity to raise a country-specific claim against removal there violated the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.”
Relying on Noem v. Abrego Garcia (2025) and on the D.V.D. court’s order for the return of O.C.G., recorded in this register, the court ordered the defendants to facilitate his release from custody in Equatorial Guinea and his return, while not prescribing the content of any diplomatic communication or directing any act by the Government of Equatorial Guinea. It found that the defendants had placed him in that country’s custody under an agreement with its government for which, “according to a Senate committee minority report, the United States paid $7.5 million.” It recorded that Equatorial Guinean officials had repeatedly told him and the others sent there that they were not wanted and should leave, and that Equatorial Guinea had routinely sent people onward from Malabo.
It enjoined the defendants from removing him “to any third country without first providing him notice of the country to which they intend to remove him and a meaningful opportunity to raise a country-specific claim against removal before a neutral judge, including appeal of any decision or part thereof in that process.” It also enjoined them from “requesting, arranging, funding, or otherwise facilitating Plaintiff’s transfer from Equatorial Guinea to Egypt.” It denied a stay pending appeal.