DAKAR: When a US immigration judge told a 28-year old refugee from East Africa that he was free to leave detention in California after 13 months, he was overjoyed.
Though an asylum request was denied, the judge ruled he could not be deported home because it would put him in danger.
“He told me: ‘Welcome to the US,’” the refugee told The Associated Press, which saw his legal documents. “You are now protected by the US law, so you can leave the center, work and stay in this country.”
But he was never freed, and instead was later handcuffed and put on a flight to Equatorial Guinea, an authoritarian petrostate in West Africa that signed a secretive deal with the Trump administration and has become a transit hub for deported migrants. It holds him and others in detention, and has no asylum policy.
He requested anonymity for fear of repercussions, saying he fled his country after being beaten, persecuted and imprisoned because of his ethnicity.
