Six key points on U.S. deportees' pleas for help from a hotel in Equatorial Guinea

Twenty-seven people deported from the U.S. are currently being held in a decommissioned hotel in the African nation, where three of the detained immigrants told the Star conditions are deteriorating to dangerous levels.

Here are six key points from the story:

• Three deportees imprisoned at Hotel Bamy, in Equatorial Guinea, told the Star they fear for their lives, and that government officials there have threatened to return them to their home countries, in violation of international law. All detainees at the hotel have been granted protections by U.S. immigration judges, who agreed the immigrants would face torture, persecution or death in their home countries. That includes Ahmed Soliman, 30, who grew up in Phoenix. The Star reported Aug. 2 that Soliman been held at the hotel for more than three months.
• In recent weeks, conditions have deteriorated to dangerous levels, the three deportees told the Star. All agreed to have their full names published, in the hopes that once the public recognizes the abuse and injustices they’re enduring, someone will intervene, they said. "I want the public to know," said Jamaican national Natalie Holmes, an ordained pastor, who was deported to Equatorial Guinea in June.

• In a recent late-night incident, all three say they were dragged from their rooms at gunpoint, handcuffed, assaulted and threatened by armed men guarding the decommissioned Hotel Bamy. "They said if we leave the hotel grounds, they will shoot us and bury us across the street," said Peta-Gaye Chambers, 35, whose parents brought her to the U.S. from Jamaica when she was 5.
• ICE spokesman Fernando X. Burgos has said the agency bears no responsibility for what happens to deportees it sends to third countries: "Once an alien leaves the United States, ICE is no longer responsible for tracking their location or activities outside the country," Burgos said in a July 27 emailed statement to the Star. He referred the Star to the U.S. State Department, which signed the secretive agreement to give Equatorial Guinea $7.5 million to receive deportees from the U.S. The State Department did not respond to the Star's questions.
• In June, international right groups filed a lawsuit, now pending before the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, that demands Equatorial Guinea improve detention conditions at the hotel and provide assurances the people held there won't be returned to their home countries, where they face torture or persecution. At least 17 of the 40 deportees who have been held at the hotel have already been wrongly deported to their home countries, an international-law violation known as "refoulement," said Meredyth Yoon, one of the lawyers who filed the lawsuit on behalf of 14 detainees at the hotel, including Soliman, of Phoenix.
• On July 29, the Star sent detailed questions to Equatorial Guinea's embassy in Washington, D.C.; a staffer said Ambassador Crisantos Obama Ondo would answer the questions. On July 31, someone at the embassy replied to the Star's questions to say the ambassador was "on vacation." The Star has since followed up with several emails; the Embassy has not responded.