Four Cuban men, along with a Brazilian and a Cameroonian, refused to disembark in Liberia on Thursday, August 20, during the first flight of deportees sent by the United States under the bilateral agreement with that African country.
The deported Cuban immigrants were transferred to Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, instead of being returned to U.S. territory as they were promised.
The group argued that Liberia "was not their country" and that they would face danger there, according to a Honduran deportee who did get off the plane and spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, as reported by AP News. After refusing to disembark, the six were separated from the other passengers and re-boarded, but the destination was not the United States.
Telemundo 51 reported that the four Cubans are: Carlos Rodríguez López, Leandro Sánchez, Emilio Destrade Correoso, and Darwin Hernández Calvo. The fifth man, who is of Brazilian nationality, is named Pietro Graza de Lima.
Meredyth Yoon, Director of Litigation at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, reported that the arrival in Malabo was "a truly heartbreaking and chaotic scene." Some of the six migrants arrived in chains and in a state of extreme distress.
Among the most serious cases is that of one of the four Cubans, who has an abdominal mass and uses a colostomy bag that must be emptied regularly. Yoon warned that there is no medical personnel at the location where they are being held.
The six are in a hotel in Malabo alongside about 40 deported migrants. This establishment is owned by the family of the president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, and has been converted into a detention center under a 7.5 million dollar agreement signed with the Trump administration.
The conditions at that hotel have progressively deteriorated: food is sometimes denied, and guards have been accused of threatening, beating, and strangling some of the detained migrants, according to Yoon.
The flight on Thursday departed from Louisiana with a stop in Dakar, Senegal, and was carrying about 20 migrants. It was the first flight conducted under the agreement between Washington and Monrovia, which allows for the deportation of up to 1,200 individuals from third countries within 12 months.
The policy of deporting individuals to third countries—nations with which migrants have no connection—has become one of the central pillars of the immigration offensive under the Trump administration.
Immigration lawyers indicate that the mechanism is used to indirectly return asylum seekers to the countries they fled from, circumventing usual legal protections. The United States has signed agreements with at least 35 nations and has deported over 23,000 people to 26 countries under these schemes.
For Cubans, the situation has a structural exacerbation: the regime in Havana has historically refused to accept deportees, which has led Washington to seek alternative destinations.
A federal judge in Massachusetts declared this practice illegal in February 2026 for being conducted without prior notification or the possibility to contest the transfer, although the ruling was temporarily suspended.
Igrayne Ribot, wife of Carlos Rodríguez López —the Cuban from Miami Gardens whose case was reported a few days earlier— summed up the impact of these deportations with words that reflect the bewilderment of many families.
"He called me and said, 'Mom, I'm in Africa.' He just said that and I broke down; no one can imagine it, it was horrifying," she expressed.
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