U.S. return of unlawfully deported AZ man stopped by appeals panel at last minute

For Tucson, the last minute reversal in Ahmed Soliman’s case has extended a legal and humanitarian crisis that has been unfolding in a federal courtroom here. Soliman was expected to begin his journey back to the United States from Equatorial Guinea this week after U.S. District Court Judge John C. Hinderaker ordered government officials to facilitate his return. But just as attorneys and officials were preparing for the trip, a Ninth Circuit appeals panel issued an administrative stay, blocking the order for now and leaving Soliman in detention overseas.

The reversal came during a Monday hearing in Hinderaker’s Tucson courtroom. The judge had required federal officials to appear in person and demonstrate that they were carrying out his Oct. 6 order, issued nearly a month earlier. Arizona U.S. Attorney Timothy Courchaine told the court that Soliman was scheduled to board a commercial flight from Equatorial Guinea early Wednesday. The itinerary included a seven hour stop in Casablanca, Morocco, followed by contact with immigration officials at Washington Dulles International Airport. Officials in Equatorial Guinea had agreed to the plan, and Christopher Deutsch, the U.S. consul general in Casablanca, had been informed.

Soliman’s attorney Dana Camilleri had even booked a flight to Morocco so she could meet him and accompany him during the final portion of his trip. That plan collapsed moments before Hinderaker ended the hearing, when Courchaine received notice of the Ninth Circuit’s order. The appeals court’s brief ruling temporarily suspended Hinderaker’s return directive while it considers the government’s request for a broader stay and its appeal of the underlying order. The court scheduled oral arguments for January 2027.

The stay did not decide whether the government was right or whether Hinderaker was wrong. Instead, it put the lower court’s order on hold while the appellate judges consider the dispute. The panel, made up of William A. Fletcher, Roopali H. Desai and Ana de Alba, also expedited the case. Its order replaced an earlier decision from Oct. 23 that had rejected the government’s emergency request to halt Soliman’s return. Camilleri said she was perplexed that the appeals court had reversed itself without explaining the change.

Hinderaker told the courtroom that, because his order had been stayed, he would not issue additional directions that day. He asked the government to notify the court if officials chose to proceed with Soliman’s return despite the stay. Courchaine said he first needed to consult officials at the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department about whether they still wanted to carry out the travel arrangements. The government had already organized the trip, he said, but Soliman’s legal team expressed little confidence that officials would voluntarily bring him back.

For Soliman, the delay means continued confinement in Equatorial Guinea, a country where he has no personal ties and where he has not been accused of a crime. By the time of the January hearing, he is expected to have spent nearly nine months imprisoned there. His lawyers say he has been held at a former hotel and, earlier, in a poor quality jail. They say armed men took his phone and the phones of other detainees, cutting them off from attorneys and journalists. According to his legal team, Soliman has also been beaten, threatened with guns and denied adequate medical care after being diagnosed with malaria. He was hospitalized twice as his health worsened.

The case began after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in Louisiana placed Soliman on a deportation flight to Equatorial Guinea on April 28. His lawyers say officers physically carried him onto the plane without advance warning or allowing him to raise concerns that he could face persecution or death there. Soliman is gay, and his attorneys say homosexuality is effectively criminalized in Equatorial Guinea. At the time of his removal, he had a habeas corpus petition pending before Hinderaker, challenging his continued detention at the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona.

Soliman’s lawyers had sought an emergency order to stop the deportation, but Hinderaker denied that request while moving the broader case forward on an accelerated schedule. Within a day, federal officials deported Soliman anyway, despite the pending case. In September, Hinderaker concluded that the removal violated federal law and Soliman’s constitutional right to due process. His Oct. 6 order directed DHS and State Department officials to bring Soliman back and handle his immigration case as it would have been handled if he had not been improperly sent abroad.

The federal government appealed that order in mid October. Officials have argued that when another country offers diplomatic assurances of humane treatment, the United States is not required to provide the same constitutional protections before sending a person there. DHS officials have also said they are not responsible for what happens after deportees arrive in countries that agree to receive them. Soliman’s attorneys and human rights advocates dispute those positions, pointing to accounts from detainees and months of reporting about conditions at Hotel Bamy. Soliman and dozens of other people sent from the United States have reportedly faced pressure from armed guards to return to countries where immigration judges had determined they could face persecution, torture or death. International law calls sending someone into that danger refoulement.

Outside the courthouse, Camilleri said the stay had come after weeks of government delay and left Soliman facing at least several more months of uncertainty. She said lawyers would find a way to tell him that the trip had been canceled, despite having prepared to reunite him with the U.S. within days. The appeals court will now consider whether federal officials can show that returning Soliman would cause them irreparable harm, as required for a stay pending appeal. Until then, a Tucson judge’s order designed to remedy an allegedly unlawful deportation remains suspended, while Soliman stays imprisoned thousands of miles away.