Pietro Graza is a gay man from Brazil who a U.S. immigration judge ruled, on April 16, 2026, cannot be sent back to his home country because he faces a real risk of torture there. Instead of releasing him, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) held him for months while it searched for another country to send him to. He was flown first to Liberia, then to Equatorial Guinea — a country he has never set foot in and has no connection to at all.

Graza says he was shackled for 36 hours during the flight. "You really felt like human garbage," he told Arizona Mirror/LOOKOUT. He and roughly a dozen other deportees are now confined to a hotel in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea's former capital, unable to leave.

This matters because Equatorial Guinea is not a safe place to be openly gay. According to the U.S. State Department's 2023 human rights report on the country, government forces have committed violence, including sexual violence, against LGBTQI+ people in detention settings. Sending a gay man who was granted protection from torture in one country straight into another with a documented record of anti-LGBTQ abuse defeats the entire purpose of that protection.

Since Sept. 9, 2026, Graza has gone silent. WhatsApp messages sent to him have gone unread, and he has been unreachable since.

We're asking ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to immediately locate Pietro Graza, confirm his safety, and stop sending LGBTQ people who have been granted protection from torture into other countries where they still face persecution. Protection on paper means nothing if it doesn't survive the flight.

Sign this petition to demand a welfare check on Pietro Graza and an end to third-country deportations that put LGBTQ people back in danger.