Pietro Graza de Lima lived in Orlando, FL for about seven years, where he ran a small general services company from 2018 until the government shut it down in 2019 for failing to file required reports. He told the Miami Herald that a judge had issued a deportation order against him but that he had separately obtained protection under the Convention Against Torture after being shot in Brazil, an attack that cost him a kidney and part of his intestine. Despite that protection, he was deported by the U.S. in August, first to Liberia, where he refused to disembark, and then to Equatorial Guinea. His legal representative said he was not given the interview he was entitled to under CAT protections to indicate a country where he could safely be sent.