Six individuals, including four Cuban men, a Brazilian man, and a Cameroonian woman, who were deported from the United States to Liberia last week, refused to disembark the plane due to safety concerns. In response, they were relocated to Equatorial Guinea, another African nation that has signed a third-country deportation agreement with the Trump administration. The group's resistance to leaving the plane was met with threats of forced return, according to an anonymous Honduran deportee onboard. Upon arrival in Malabo city, Equatorial Guinea, they were held in a hotel where conditions have deteriorated in recent months, with reports of food withholding, threats, beatings, and choking by guards. The Cameroonian woman and one Cuban man, who has a large abdominal growth and requires regular colostomy bag drainage, are reported to be in extreme distress due to the lack of medical care at the hotel. This incident raises concerns about the Trump administration's use of third-country deportation agreements as a legal loophole to indirectly return asylum seekers to countries they have fled from. Equatorial Guinea's government has yet to comment on the matter, which comes under an opaque $7.5 million deal with the U.S. administration that allows their president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, to use a family-owned hotel as a detention center for U.S.-deported asylum seekers.