Trump administration live updates: House returns to D.C. for vote on ending the government shutdown
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., questioned a $7.5 million payment the Trump administration made to Equatorial Guinea to take third-country nationals who have been deported, saying the African nation has “one of the most corrupt governments in the world.”
The “highly unusual” payment to the West African nation “raises serious concerns over the responsible, transparent use of American taxpayer dollars,” Shaheen said in a letter Monday to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, noting that the payment “would far exceed” total U.S. foreign assistance to Equatorial Guinea in the last eight years.
Equatorial Guinea ranks 173rd out of 180 countries for corruption, according to the research group Transparency International, and a 2025 State Department report cited “multiple credible sources” who accused government officials of involvement in human trafficking, including for sex. President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been in power for nearly a half-century, is accused of siphoning money meant for his impoverished nation to fund his family’s lavish lifestyle.
Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said she was concerned that the U.S. payment could be used to facilitate human trafficking, and that the third-country nationals the U.S. sends to Equatorial Guinea could end up being trafficked themselves. She asked what the State Department was doing to make sure that doesn’t happen.
