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Ten days after a federal judge ordered it to help bring Ahmed Soliman back from Equatorial Guinea, the government told the court on Oct. 16 that it is still “attempting to confirm” where he is and who is holding him. The filing came the same day Soliman’s lawyers said he had been hospitalized there, the Arizona Daily Star reported, and it puts a hard question to the court: what an order to “facilitate” a deportee’s return actually requires, and how quickly.
Immigration Analytics reported on the Oct. 6 ruling by U.S. District Judge John C. Hinderaker in Tucson, who found that the Department of Homeland Security violated Soliman’s due process rights by flying him in April to a country he had never lived in, without notice or a chance to say he feared harm there. Soliman, an Egyptian national who grew up in Phoenix, holds protection under the Convention Against Torture that bars his return to Egypt. The judge ordered DHS to facilitate his return and to file regular status reports.
The second of those reports, signed by U.S. Attorney Timothy Courchaine and an assistant U.S. attorney, says the government is working with personnel in Equatorial Guinea to confirm Soliman’s “exact location and custody status” and that DHS is preparing a declaration with more detail, due Monday, Oct. 19, according to the Star. Kate O’Donnell, one of Soliman’s lawyers, called it the second “basically empty status report.” She told the paper that the team learned of the hospitalization after a local lawyer was turned away from the hotel where Soliman has been held, and that “our understanding is he’s seriously ill.” His lawyers have not been given a diagnosis. These details come from a single outlet and from Soliman’s counsel, and DHS had not responded publicly on the hospitalization.
Why the status reports carry the case
The word “facilitate” comes from the Supreme Court’s April 10, 2025, order in Noem v. Abrego Garcia, which required the government to facilitate Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to handle his case as it would have been handled had he not been wrongly removed. The verb is limited by design. A U.S. court cannot command a foreign government to release anyone, so the obligation reaches only steps within the government’s own control. That leaves the status report as the main way a judge can measure compliance.
Read against that standard, the Oct. 16 filing is notable less for what it promises than for what it concedes. DHS lawyers have told the court that Soliman and other deportees in Equatorial Guinea are “safe,” citing diplomatic assurances from that government, the Star reported. If those assurances were firm enough to justify sending him without a fear screening, the court is likely to ask why the same channel cannot yet establish where he is. In the Abrego Garcia litigation, the district court answered thin government updates by demanding sworn declarations and ordering expedited discovery. Monday’s declaration will show whether Judge Hinderaker needs to consider similar steps.
A return would not end Soliman’s case. His final removal order stands, and DHS told NPR earlier this month that “the end result will be the same,” meaning he would not stay in the United States. What the order secures is the process he did not get: notice of any new destination and a hearing on his fear of harm there before he is sent.
The case is one of a small but growing set. In September, U.S. District Judge Regina Rodriguez in Colorado ordered the return of Brayan Omar Sanchez Servellon, a Honduran man sent to the Central African Republic, Colorado Public Radio reported. The numbers behind these cases are large. The Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, counted third-country arrangements with at least 35 governments and more than 25,000 removals to at least 30 countries as of mid-October 2026, about 80 percent of them to Mexico; Equatorial Guinea is on its list. The Supreme Court will hear the government’s appeal over third-country removals without advance notice, DHS v. D.V.D., on Dec. 9. Until then, individual orders like this one are the main check available to a single deportee, and Soliman’s case shows how slowly they move once the person is in another country’s hands.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources: Arizona Daily Star, “Ariz. man ‘unlawfully’ deported to Africa hospitalized; DHS moving slowly to return him” (Oct. 16, 2026); Arizona Daily Star, “Judge orders Arizona man returned from Africa after ‘unlawful’ deportation”; NPR, “U.S. working to reverse an Egyptian man’s third-country deportation to Africa” (Oct. 9, 2026), via KPBS; Supreme Court docket, Noem v. Abrego Garcia, No. 24A949; Colorado Public Radio, “Colorado judge orders Honduran man who was deported to Africa back to the state” (Sept. 24, 2026); Migration Policy Institute, “How the United States Is Using Third Countries to Expand Immigration Control” (Oct. 15, 2026); Supreme Court docket, DHS v. D.V.D., No. 26-426.
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