Man arrested in St. Paul among 8 deported to Somalia from Guantanamo Bay
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U.S. immigration authorities on Thursday deported a group of eight Somali men who’d been held for about a month at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Aboard the flight were several people who’d settled in Minnesota, including Adam Abdullah, 31.
Masked immigration agents arrested Abdullah Dec. 12 at the start of what the Trump Administration called Operation Metro Surge.
Beyond two parking tickets for not moving his vehicle during snowstorms, Abdullah has no criminal record in Minnesota and was working legally as a mechanic while his asylum application was pending. He arrived in the United States in early 2023.
Abdullah first spoke with MPR News on Sept. 8, during one of the 10-minute calls he was allowed each day from the prison at the U.S. naval base. He said that after his arrest, ICE shuttled him between detention centers in Minnesota, Kentucky and Louisiana before shipping him to Guantanamo in late August with seven other Somali men.
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When they first boarded the plane to Cuba, Abdullah said the detainees were told that they’d be going to Somalia after refueling stops, but they remained at Guantanamo.
In a longer phone conversation Friday from his family’s home on the outskirts of Mogadishu, Abdullah recounted a difficult month in confinement at the military prison. He said that he and the other seven Somali detainees were held under heavy security.
They got an hour of exercise each day in an outdoor cage and were put in chains when they were escorted to the telephone area. Guards gave them very little information about how long they’d be at Guantanamo.
“It was very hard,” Abdullah said. “The first day when we got there, we had a lot of questions and nobody was answering our questions. So the second day, we started a hunger strike.”
Abdullah said that in retaliation, guards put him in solitary confinement in an over-air-conditioned room.
“They beat me, and they put me in a room, a freezing room, so to scare the other guys,” he said.
The others ended their hunger strike, but Abdullah said that he held out until he was allowed to talk with someone at the Somali embassy. It was then that he learned that ICE had planned to deport him to his home country and that the embassy had forwarded his travel documents to ICE.
After having been away for more than three years, Abdullah said that he is happy to have his freedom back and to see his siblings again, but said that nine months in confinement were difficult.
His mother fell ill in March while he was jailed. He found out about her illness two days before she died, but authorities would not allow him to make an international call from detention or to depart the country voluntarily.
“I requested a voluntary departure while she was sick, but they denied it,” Abdullah said. “I told them, my mom is sick. Even when she died, I told them, but there was nothing they could do.”
As Abdullah readjusts to life in Mogadishu, he said that some people there are treating him with suspicion because of Guantanamo’s infamous, two-decade global reputation as a prison for terrorism suspects
“Even some of my family members, they are not believing that I went there innocent,” he said.
MPR News twice asked the Department of Homeland Security about why it targeted the eight Somalis for deportation and sent them to Guantanamo Bay.
Both times, DHS replied with identical statements in which a spokesperson called the men “the worst of the worst,” but the department provided no evidence that they had committed crimes in the U.S. or elsewhere. In a separate statement Thursday, DHS said that it never discloses information about deportation flights “for operational security and the safety of our personnel.”
Abdullah said that he was among nine Somali men on the flight to East Africa; besides himself and seven others who’d been held at Guantanamo, a ninth man had boarded the plane in Louisiana prior to its arrival at Guantanamo. He said the flight left Cuba in the middle of the night.
“They woke us up and they told us ‘get ready, you have 30 minutes.’ They put the chains [on us] and they transported us to the airplane.”
Abdullah recounted that they were chained up throughout the transatlantic flight, which included stops in Puerto Rico, Dakar and Nairobi. In Nairobi, they were transferred to a Somali airline that flew them on the last leg of the trip to Mogadishu.
The ACLU is suing to stop ICE’s use of Guantanamo for immigration detainees, but that suit is still pending. Twin Cities immigration attorney Marc Prokosh, who represented Abdullah and three of the other Somali men held at Guantanamo, said in an interview Friday that because the detainees had deportation orders to their nation of origin, ICE’s actions do not appear to run afoul of federal law.
“We can all debate the morality and the ethics of it, but legally, it seems like it was solid,” Prokosh said.
While ICE was holding the men at Guantanamo, the agency suddenly removed location information from its public database for detainees with final deportation orders. Prokosh said that this made it difficult to keep track of his clients.
“People with final removal orders have legal options, but I need to be able to talk with them to explore their options, " Prokosh said. “So now when the government is choosing to disappear people, it really makes it difficult to make sure that their due process rights are being upheld.”
Despite nine months in custody, Abdullah said he has not soured on the United States.
“American people are good people,” he said. “It was just bad timing.”
