Pietro Graza de Lima, a gay Brazilian man who lived in Orlando, Florida for about seven years running a small services business, fled Brazil after corrupt police shot him over his sexuality, an attack that cost him a kidney and left lasting physical damage. After his student visa expired and he was arrested for drug possession, ICE detained him for nearly two years, including time at Eloy Detention Center in Arizona. On April 16, 2026, an immigration judge granted him protection from deportation to Brazil under the Convention Against Torture, but ICE continued holding him while seeking another country to deport him to. After he refused to sign a document accepting removal to Liberia, he was shackled for roughly 36 hours and flown to Liberia—where he and other detainees refused to disembark—and then to Equatorial Guinea, a country with which he has no ties. His attorney said he was denied the interview he was entitled to under CAT protections before being sent there. He and about a dozen other deportees have been confined at a decommissioned hotel, Hotel Bamy, in Malabo, where armed officers confiscated his phone on September 8, 2026 after he spoke with journalists, cutting off contact with his attorneys and leaving him unreachable since September 9, 2026.