An ICE agent told a federal judge that a deportation flight to Equatorial Guinea had been canceled. But the next day, the plane arrived — prompting lawyers for a man the government was ordered to bring home to accuse the administration of lying in court.
That’s according to The American Prospect, which reported Friday that lawyers called out the government’s sworn account as “plainly false” and asked the judge to stop the aircraft from leaving without their client, Ahmed Soliman.
The plane departed roughly two and a half hours after landing, before the judge ruled.
Soliman “continues to suffer irreparable harm every day that he remains in Equatorial Guinea,” his attorneys wrote in an emergency motion.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge John C. Hinderaker in Arizona ordered the administration to return Soliman, a 31-year-old gay Egyptian national, ruling his due process rights were violated when he was deported to Equatorial Guinea in April.
But ICE agent Andrea Chiriboga Villacis told the court Thursday that headquarters had advised the removal mission was canceled.
“Therefore, that mission is not available as a means to transport Petitioner to the United States,” she wrote.
Flight data threw that account into question, according to the Prospect.
“The documents also showed the purpose of the flight to Equatorial Guinea was to expel 25 more third-country nationals there, with no stated plan to bring Soliman on board,” the outlet reported Friday.
His attorneys then demanded that the court bar the plane from departing without him "because Defendants’ attestations were plainly false."
“This is the very essence of irreparable harm.”