DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Migrants deported from the U.S. and detained in a hotel in Equatorial Guinea say that authorities there also have used the facility to quarantine at least one suspected Ebola patient, deportees and lawyers representing them said Thursday.
The hotel on a tropical island off the country’s coast, owned by the country’s powerful President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, is being used to house 17 migrants from countries including Angola, Mauritania and Ethiopia under an opaque third-country deportation deal with the Trump administration.
According to a statement from a coalition of international lawyers and interviews with two of the deportees, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, a man suspected of having Ebola was brought to the hotel last week by medical personnel in hazmat suits, and placed on a floor below the detainees.
The central African nation of Congo is currently battling a rare Ebola virus that has killed over 600 in an outbreak first announced in May. Cases have been confirmed in neighboring Uganda, but so far no cases — or even suspected cases — have been reported in Equatorial Guinea, which shares no border with Congo and is roughly 1885 miles (1,425 km) away.
However, two deportees told The Associated Press that they were told by a doctor in English that the man was a suspected Ebola patient and that they should be careful, but that they were provided no further details.
The lawyers group said in a statement that they had received “disturbing reports from multiple detained individuals that a person with a suspected case of Ebola was recently brought under quarantine into the same hotel complex where they are being held.”
One of the deportees said that a woman also was brought to the quarantine floor on Sunday and that medical staff had identified her as a suspected Ebola patient as well.
The AP saw videos showing medical personnel in full protective equipment appearing to transport patients to the hotel, which also served as an isolation center during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Things are getting worse every day,” one of the detainees said in an interview. “It’s very confusing, no one is coming to talk to us. No one is informing us of anything. The hygiene is unimaginable.”
Apart from those present at the moment, the detainees were provided with no masks, disinfectants or other basic protective supplies, nor informed of any measures to reduce the risk of exposure, lawyers and detainees said.
Under a series of often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people it has deemed to be in the country illegally to nearly two dozen countries that are not their own, advocates say, as part of a broad U.S. crackdown to deter illegal immigration.
Immigration lawyers said the Trump administration uses deportations to third countries as a legal loophole to indirectly force asylum seekers back to their home countries. Equatorial Guinea is one of at least eight other African nations that the U.S. has struck such agreements with.
Following an $7.5 million deal with Equatorial Guinea, President Obiang has turned a hotel owned by his family in Malabo on Bioko island into a detention center.
There are currently 4 women and 13 men held in the hotel, according to the lawyers. All of them have received orders from U.S. judges that should have protected them from being removed to their home countries, the lawyers said.
Earlier this month, rights lawyers filed a case against Equatorial Guinea before Africa’s top human rights body, accusing the central African nation of forcing deportees from the U.S. back to their home countries in violation of their rights.
The lawyers’ coalition said on Thursday that they also received “multiple reports that individuals with serious medical conditions are being denied adequate medical care while detained in government custody.”
Equatorial Guinea is one of the richest countries in Africa thanks to its oil resources. It is also rife with corruption and human rights abuses, according to U.S. officials.
There are virtually no critical voices in Equatorial Guinea, where the government has been accused by rights groups and the U.S. State Department of detaining, torturing and even killing those that dare to speak out.
The country’s largest foreign investors are U.S. businesses, and its military receives funding for training from the U.S. government.
