1. United States
2. Calif.
3. Letter

I am writing to urge your office to take immediate action to locate Ahmed Soliman and verify his safety. Ahmed Soliman is a 30-year-old Arizona man who was born in Egypt and came to the United States when he was four years old. He grew up in Arizona and has spent virtually his entire life there. Before his deportation, he was a lawful permanent resident. In April, the United States deported Ahmed to Equatorial Guinea — a country he had never visited and with which he had no prior connection. He was subsequently confined to a hotel in Malabo along with other deportees. Last week, Ahmed spoke with Reuters and other journalists about the conditions in which he and the other deportees were being held. He described an alarming incident at the hotel in which Equatorial Guinean security forces pointed firearms at him and other migrants. Following the publication of the Reuters report, security forces returned to the hotel and seized the migrants' phones, citing the news coverage as the justification. Shortly afterward, Ahmed was taken into police custody. He is now being held incommunicado at an undisclosed location. Reuters has reported that Equatorial Guinean authorities have not disclosed his whereabouts or his status. His lawyers have been unable to locate him and now fear that he may have been transferred from the hotel to one of Equatorial Guinea's notorious prisons, where there are documented concerns about torture and disappearances. At this moment, we do not know where Ahmed is, whether he is safe, or what conditions he is being held in. Given the circumstances surrounding his detention, this uncertainty is an urgent and potentially life-threatening concern. I respectfully ask your office to take the following actions immediately: 1. Initiate an urgent congressional inquiry to the Department of State and request direct diplomatic intervention with Equatorial Guinean authorities. Please contact the Department of State through a formal congressional inquiry and ask it to immediately engage the government of Equatorial Guinea through U.S diplomatic channels to establish Ahmed's current whereabouts and obtain confirmation of his physical safety and well-being. 2. Press the State Department to secure access to Ahmed and advocate for his protection. Please ask the State Department to use its diplomatic channels with Equatorial Guinea to press for Ahmed to have access to his attorneys and communication with his family, to ensure he can receive appropriate medical care if needed, and to seek appropriate diplomatic or independent monitoring of his treatment and conditions of detention. 3. Use your office's public platform and congressional oversight authority to bring sustained attention to Ahmed's case. Please publicly call for Ahmed's whereabouts and safety to be confirmed and raise his case with your congressional colleagues and the appropriate committees. Ahmed took the risk of speaking out so that the world would know what was happening to him and the other deportees. Congress cannot allow him to disappear without answers. The United States sent Ahmed to Equatorial Guinea, and Congress must use every appropriate channel to ensure that the U.S. government does not look away while someone it deported disappears into an undisclosed foreign detention facility. Thank you for your immediate attention to this urgent matter.