{"id":10209,"date":"2026-05-28T18:02:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T18:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=10209"},"modified":"2026-05-28T18:02:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T18:02:15","slug":"exclusive-inside-an-african-hotel-where-asylum-seekers-deported-by-the-us-are-imprisoned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=10209","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Inside an African hotel where asylum seekers deported by the US are imprisoned"},"content":{"rendered":"

By MONIKA PRONCZUK<\/strong><\/p>\n

MALABO, Equatorial Guinea (AP) \u2014 At first glance, the hotel looks like any other on this tropical island off the Central African coast, with its palm tree-lined driveway, marble-floored foyer and portrait of the oil-rich country\u2019s president hanging behind a mahogany reception desk.<\/p>

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Yet the eerily empty Bamy Hotel is not a refuge for adventure-seeking tourists or international business travelers these days. Since late last year, only a small number of people have been staying there, and they aren\u2019t on vacation. They are being held against their will.<\/p>\n

Under an opaque $7.5 million deal with the Trump administration, Equatorial Guinea\u2019s all-powerful president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, has turned this hotel owned by his family into a prison for asylum seekers deported from the United States.<\/p>\n

The hotel is just a way station, though. Of the at least 32 people imprisoned there since November \u2014 all of whom had previously been granted protection from U.S. judges, their lawyers said \u2014 25 have been forced to go back to home countries across Africa where their lives might be in danger. The rest face pressure from authorities to leave.<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernment people would come all the time and say: Where is your passport? You need to go back to your own country,\u201d said a 26-year-old man from an East African country imprisoned at the hotel. Out of fear of retaliation, he spoke on condition of anonymity, as did two other deportees interviewed by The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration uses deportations to third countries as a legal loophole, immigration lawyers say, to indirectly force asylum seekers back to their home countries.<\/p>\n

Because Equatorial Guinea is run by an authoritarian government \u2014 as are some other countries that have signed similar deals \u2014 it is difficult for foreign journalists to visit and report directly on conditions there. AP traveled to the island of Bioko as part of a recent visit by the first American pope, and is the only international news organization to visit the hotel detaining migrants.<\/p>

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