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The federal government says it has begun working to bring back Ahmed Soliman, an Egyptian man who grew up in Arizona as a green card holder and was deported this spring to Equatorial Guinea, a country where he had never lived. The shift follows an Oct. 6 order by U.S. District Judge John C. Hinderaker in Arizona, who found that the Department of Homeland Security violated Soliman’s Fifth Amendment right to due process by sending him there without notice or any chance to say he feared harm, and directed the agency to facilitate his return. It is one of the clearest tests so far of what a court can do for a third-country deportee after the Supreme Court allowed such removals to continue while it considers their legality.
The timing is what gives the order weight. On Sept. 29, the Supreme Court paused a Massachusetts judge’s nationwide requirement that people facing third-country removal receive written notice and a chance to raise a torture claim first, and set the case, DHS v. D.V.D., No. 26-426, for argument on Dec. 9. Immigration Analytics explained that case last week. The stay allows DHS to continue these removals while the case is pending. Judge Hinderaker’s ruling shows that the stay did not end the inquiry in individual cases: a judge can still find that one specific removal crossed a constitutional line and order the government to undo it as far as it is able.
Soliman’s history explains why Egypt was off the table. According to NPR, he came to the United States as a child, grew up in Arizona with permanent resident status and lost that status after a 2023 drug possession and aggravated assault case led to a prison sentence. An immigration judge then ordered him removed but, as the Arizona Daily Star reported, granted him protection under the Convention Against Torture in October 2025, finding he would face torture or death in Egypt because he is gay and because of his family’s political activity. That kind of protection bars removal to the country of feared harm but does not, by itself, stop the government from looking elsewhere. Federal law, at 8 U.S.C. 1231(b), lists the alternative countries DHS may consider, and ICE kept searching.
The Star reported that Soliman filed a habeas petition in April to block a third-country removal and was flown to Equatorial Guinea later that month, before the court ruled. DHS did not dispute that he received no fear screening before the flight. What happened next is the core of the judge’s harm finding. Court filings described by NPR say Soliman has been held at a decommissioned hotel under armed guard, threatened at gunpoint, arrested and beaten, and cut off from his family and lawyers. NPR reported that the judge treated those accounts as unrebutted.
What “facilitate” requires, and what it does not
The order borrows its key verb from the Supreme Court’s April 2025 decision in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, which required the government to “facilitate” the return of a man wrongly sent to El Salvador. The word is deliberately limited. A U.S. court cannot order a foreign government to release anyone, so the obligation runs only to steps within DHS’s control. As reported by the Arizona Daily Star, those include issuing travel documents, arranging transport to a U.S. port of entry at government expense, filing regular status reports on Soliman’s location and condition, and not sending him to any other third country without first giving him a meaningful chance to raise a fear claim before a neutral decision-maker.
The government’s objections, as the Star described them, were these: Equatorial Guinea had given diplomatic assurances that made a fear screening unnecessary; Soliman’s injuries could not be redressed by a U.S. court because he is in another country’s custody; an order would intrude on foreign affairs; and the court should wait for the Supreme Court to decide D.V.D. Judge Hinderaker, an appointee of President Trump, rejected each. In a filing on Friday, U.S. Attorney Timothy Courchaine wrote that the government is working “collaboratively” with Soliman’s lawyers to find and contact him, NPR reported.
DHS has also made clear that compliance is not concession. The department told NPR it would follow lawful court orders and that Soliman would continue to receive due process, but that “the end result will be the same,” meaning he will not remain in the United States. That is a legally coherent position. Soliman still has a final removal order, and the court did not disturb it. What the order secures is the process he was denied: notice of where DHS intends to send him and a hearing on whether he fears harm there. In practical terms, a successful return would most likely mean detention in the United States followed by a new attempt at removal to some country, this time with a screening first.
Not the first, and probably not the last. NPR reported that this is the second time a judge has forced the government to return a third-country deportee from Africa, after a Colorado judge ordered the return of Brayan Omar Sanchez Servellon, a Honduran man sent to the Central African Republic. Soliman’s lawyers told NPR they are seeking a similar result for another client, a gay Brazilian man also in Equatorial Guinea. With the administration having reached deals with more than 30 countries to accept deportees with no ties to them, according to NPR, more individual challenges of this kind are likely.
For practitioners, the case offers two lessons that hold regardless of how D.V.D. comes out. First, a grant of withholding of removal or CAT protection as to one country should be treated as the start of the client’s exposure, not the end: any fear of possible third countries belongs on the record early, in writing and with specifics. Second, speed matters. Soliman’s habeas petition was pending when he was put on a plane, and the relief he won came months later and depends on a foreign government’s cooperation. In our view, the December argument is likely to center on whether courts may require advance notice across the board; Soliman’s case shows what the alternative looks like when that notice is missing in a single case.
Source: NPR, “U.S. working to reverse an Egyptian man’s third-country deportation to Africa” (Oct. 9, 2026), via KPBS; Arizona Daily Star, “Judge orders Arizona man returned from Africa after ‘unlawful’ deportation”; Supreme Court docket, DHS v. D.V.D., No. 26-426.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
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