Judge to U.S. officials: Appear in court, or prove deported AZ man coming home

In a fiery Oct. 29 order, District Judge John C. Hinderaker also raised the possibility of "contempt" proceedings against officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. State Department, both defendants in a civil lawsuit filed Sept. 15 by attorneys for Ahmed Soliman.

"The Court does not take threats of contempt or sanctions lightly. Contempt is a serious remedy, and a court must use the least possible power adequate to secure compliance," wrote Hinderaker, a judge of the U.S. District Court of Arizona's Tucson division. "But courts have inherent power to enforce compliance with their lawful orders."

Soliman, 31, and his attorneys say he has been imprisoned and abused in Equatorial Guinea, a country to which he has no ties, since he was deported there without due process in April. Soliman grew up in Phoenix after his family fled Egypt when he was 4.

Hinderaker has grown increasingly exasperated with federal officials, who have thus far been slow to comply with his Oct. 6 order that DHS facilitate the return of Soliman after what the judge called his "unlawful" deportation.

Soliman and dozens of other U.S. deportees have been held for months at a decommissioned hotel in Malabo, the former capital of Equatorial Guinea, despite none of them having committed a crime in the Central African nation. 

Hinderaker's Oct. 29 order said ICE deportation officer Andrea Chiriboga Villacis and the agency's legal counsel, Arizona U.S. Attorney Timothy Courchaine, must appear physically in Tucson court for the 2 p.m. hearing Monday.

But he said the 2 p.m. hearing will be vacated if officials can prove to the court, by 12 p.m. Monday, that Soliman will be aboard a commercial flight leaving Equatorial Guinea on Wednesday, Nov. 4. ICE claimed to have already booked him a ticket on the commercial flight in an earlier filing.

"The Court will vacate the hearing if Defendant can produce evidence by 12:00 PM on Monday, November 2, 2026, that reasonably satisfies the Court that (Soliman) will be aboard the Royal Air Maroc Flight 262 scheduled to depart Malabo at 5:45 a.m. (Nov. 4), followed by the Royal Air Maroc Flight 218 scheduled to depart Casablanca at 3:25 p.m., with arrival in Washington Dulles International Airport at 7:05 p.m."

First moves to return Soliman

In an Oct. 30 filing in the case, U.S. State Department official Adam Zerbinopoulos summarized the agency's progress in returning Soliman, stating the U.S. Embassy in Equatorial Guinea had issued a travel letter for Soliman, largely clearing the way for his departure.

"The Embassy reported that it is currently awaiting the Government of Equatorial Guinea’s formal response to its request for that government’s assistance in" returning Soliman, Zerbinopoulos wrote. "The Embassy also reported that it expects a positive response to that request."

The filing highlights the first indications that DHS and the State Department have taken concrete steps to comply with Hinderaker's Oct. 6 order. In the weeks since, Soliman has continued to languish in a decommissioned hotel, even as ICE charter flights passed through the region.

Soliman also spent weeks in jail, after he was violently arrested Sept. 11 at the hotel, though he was not charged with any crime. His attorneys say he was targeted in retaliation for speaking out to journalists.

On Oct. 19, DHS officials still claimed they hadn't located Soliman, despite his lawyers having informed DHS's counsel that Soliman was being held at the Hotel Bamy. Attorneys also notified ICE when Soliman was returned to the hotel after a day-long stay at a hospital, likely due to malaria, lawyers said.

"There is no urgency to comply. I think that's been very plain," said one of Soliman's attorneys, Dana Camilleri, of Tucson-based law firm Green Evans-Schroeder.

A U.S. flight even landed in Equatorial Guinea on Oct. 23, one day after an ICE official falsely stated in a sworn declaration that the flight had been cancelled. When Soliman's lawyers notified Hinderaker about the U.S. flight landing in Equatorial Guinea, Hinderaker ordered DHS to expedite Soliman's processing to get him on the plane.

But the flight left Equatorial Guinea, without Soliman, a couple hours after landing. ICE's Fernando Valenzuela later said in a court filing that Soliman couldn't be returned on the flight because ICE hadn't yet secured his travel documents — more than two weeks after Hinderaker's Oct. 6 order.

International law violations

The U.S. State Department paid the government of Equatorial Guinea $7.5 million in a secretive deal in exchange for the country accepting deportees from the U.S.

Equatorial Guinea officials have not explained the basis for imprisoning U.S. deportees sent there. None of the U.S. deportees imprisoned at the Hotel Bamy have any ties to Equatorial Guinea. All were previously granted protection against return to their home countries by a U.S. immigration judge, who agreed they could face persecution, torture or death there.

Soliman was granted protection against return to Egypt under the Convention Against Torture in 2025, while he was being held in ICE detention. Soliman had been transferred to ICE custody after serving a 2.5-year prison sentence for causing a car accident while under the influence of fentanyl. The 2023 conviction caused him to lose his status as a lawful permanent resident.

Several deportees told the Star, before armed guards seized their phones, that at the hotel they'd been repeatedly assaulted, held at gunpoint and told they'd be killed if they didn't agree to return to their home countries.

"A lot of the threats that Ahmed and others have faced is basically, 'We will kill you unless you go back to Egypt, go back to where you're from.' Those are the threats that people at (Hotel) Bamy are experiencing daily," Camilleri said.

Critics say the U.S. government has been complicit in violations of international law, and U.S. statute, through its third-country removals effort. The Trump administration has signed agreements with dozens of countries that have agreed to receive U.S. deportees who couldn't be deported to their home countries, in exchange for payments.

But some of the receiving countries have quickly sent those U.S. deportees back to their countries of origin, despite the protections granted by U.S. immigration judges. That's a violation of international law known as refoulement, attorneys and human-rights advocates say.  

Multiple people who were imprisoned at Hotel Bamy with Soliman were later returned to their home countries of Cameroon and Ethiopia, despite the protections granted by U.S. immigration judges. 

Hinderaker has presided over two court cases filed by counsel for Soliman since April, when ICE suddenly deported Soliman while his habeas corpus petition was still pending before Hinderaker's court.

In the civil complaint, Hinderaker ruled Soliman's deportation was "unlawful," in violation of both U.S. law and Soliman's due process rights under the U.S. Constitution, as he was denied the opportunity to lodge his fear of being deported to Equatorial Guinea.

Soliman faces life-threatening risks in Equatorial Guinea due to his identity as a gay man, in a country where homosexuality is de facto criminalized, his lawyers say. 

Government appeal

Two weeks after Hinderaker's Oct. 6 return order, the U.S. government appealed the decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, asking for a stay of Hinderaker's order. Unless a stay is granted, Hinderaker has emphasized he still has jurisdiction in Soliman's case.

If the appeals court rules against the U.S. government's stay request, and if Soliman's civil case is still pending, the government will likely appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Camilleri said.

"I'm personally concerned they're trying to run out the clock on the travel authorization," Camilleri said, "and trying to get to the Supreme Court and take advantage of their shadow docket," in which the justices issue a quick ruling without explaining the basis for it.

That was the government’s strategy in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man whom a judge found was wrongly deported to his native El Salvador, despite being granted protection against return there, she said.

In raising the issue of contempt in his Oct. 29 filing, Hinderaker said DHS and the State Department haven't even attempted to explain their failure to carry out his return order so far. He listed numerous requirements that the U.S. government has failed to fulfill in the 23 days since his Oct. 6 return order.

"Despite three orders to do so," Hinderaker wrote Oct. 29, the U.S. government has not yet told the court "where Plaintiff is held, what his physical condition is, and how they know."

"Defendants appear to bristle at their obligation to follow the Court’s explicit orders," Hinderaker continued. "Critically, Defendants have not contended — much less demonstrated — that any of these steps cannot be completed in time. Nor have they identified an impediment to any of them.

"A party that violates a specific and definite order bears the burden of showing why it was unable to comply. ... The Court’s orders here are specific and definite. Defendants have appeared to hesitate to effectuate the relief the Court has ordered."

Camilleri said the slow-walking of Soliman’s return is "incredibly frustrating," especially because she knows it’s a choice by the U.S. government. For 17 years, Camilleri was a senior trial attorney for the Department of Justice’s Office of Immigration Litigation's civil division.

"I was still in the department when everything with Kilmar (Abrego Garcia) was going on," she said. "I understand how quickly they could get Ahmed back if they wanted to. But they're running the same playbook. ... They don't think they’ll ever be held to account."