Suspected Ebola patient placed at hotel holding US deportees – lawyers
A suspected Ebola patient has been placed in the same facility in Equatorial Guinea where migrants deported from the US are being held, a human rights coalition said on Thursday, warning of potential health risks at the detention center.
The coalition, which includes the Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa (IHRDA), the Pan African Lawyers Union, EG Justice, Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta and the Global Strategic Litigation Council, said detainees reported that medical personnel wearing protective equipment brought the suspected patient to the hotel complex in Malabo.
The group said those being held at the facility were not provided with masks, disinfectants or other protective supplies for several days after the patient’s arrival.
The reports come amid an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where at least 600 people have died.
“When the government agreed to accept people deported as part of the Trump Administration mass deportation policy, they triggered a duty to safeguard their rights,” Beatrice Njeri, regional litigator for Africa at the Global Strategic Litigation Council said.
The hotel, which AP said is located on a tropical island off Equatorial Guinea’s coast and owned by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, is currently holding 17 people deported from the US, including nationals of Angola, Jamaica, Mauritania and Ethiopia. The first transfer arrived in November 2025, while the latest group came in June, according to the coalition.
The deportations are part of a removal policy pursued by the administration of President Donald Trump that allows migrants, some of whom the US Homeland Security has labeled “barbaric criminals,” to be sent to countries where they have no ties.
The arrangement has faced legal challenges and criticism from rights groups, including in Ghana, Uganda and Eswatini.
Last week, civil society organization Global Strategic Litigation Council announced a case against Equatorial Guinea before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights on behalf of 14 deportees transferred from the US. The group accused the Central African nation’s government of receiving $7.5 million from Washington to host the deportees, who it said are at a “real risk of persecution, torture, sexual violence, imprisonment, and death.”
On Thursday, the coalition of human rights lawyers and advocacy groups said its clients in Equatorial Guinea are being held in “arbitrary detention,” adding that the “denial of adequate medical care and possible exposure to highly contagious disease constitute grave violations of international human rights law.”
