From Sky Harbor to Bangui: How a Turkish man with U.S. torture protections ended up deported

Yagiz Doruk Hallac had been granted special protections by an immigration judge in New York in 2023 and thought that, combined with his lack of criminal history, meant he could visit friends in Arizona in late February. 

Four months later, the 24-year-old was on a 22-hour flight with 20 others who were being shipped to the Central African Republic, a country he had no connections to. 

Hallac had been granted a United Nations Convention Against Torture protection, or CAT protection, due to his fears of returning to his home country of Turkey, where he is a religious minority. Members of the Alevi faith have faced increased discrimination and have a history of deadly violence directed towards them. 

In 1987, a litany of countries, including the United States, signed on to the Convention Against Torture as a way to prevent countries from sending people to places where they could face torture. These protections have been in place for years for migrants in the United States, but an internal ICE email from February 2025 shows that the agency is reviewing CAT migrants for expedited third-country removals instead of providing the immigrants with an opportunity to object to deportation.

That policy change ensnared Hallac. 

When he walked off a plane at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, he was met by ICE agents. They detained him and took him to the Florence Correctional Facility. 

“Our government did nothing within the proper due process channels prior to this,” Mo Goldman, Hallac’s Tucson-based immigration attorney, told the Arizona Mirror. 

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to the Mirror’s questions about Hallac’s case, why he was deported and why the agency moved so rapidly to deport a non-violent migrant with a CAT designation.  

Hallac was deported to the Central African Republic, one of several countries President Donald Trump’s administration has been paying for accepting deportations. 

His middle-of-the-night deportation came in the midst of a legal challenge to his detention. Hallac’s attorney and family didn’t learn of his deportation until he had already arrived in the Central African Republic, where authorities took his passport and ordered him to stay in a government apartment and not leave. 

From Sky Harbor to Bangui 

Hallac and his family are members of the Alevi faith, a religious group that has faced persecution in Turkey, where Hallac is originally from. The Alevi are followers of Ali, the brother-in-law of Prophet Muhammed, and the religion is rooted in Islam and Sufism, combined with some traditions of Christianity and Shamanism.

Up until last year, the Turkish government did not recognize Alevi houses of worship as legitimate. Many Alevis in the country have been calling for more recognition as their prominence grows, but members of the faith have still seen regular discrimination and attacks. 

In the late 1970s, there was the Maraş massacre, and in 1993 the Sivas massacre. Long before those instances, Alevis were the target of violence by the Ottoman Empire, which still reverberates today. 

That history of discrimination and violence is why Hallac was granted CAT protection in 2023. 

Three years later, Hallac had a work permit and a job. He was going to school, had a girlfriend, and a car and was looking to visit friends in the Grand Canyon State. His mother warned him not to travel, but Hallac felt his CAT designation would protect him. 

It didn’t. 

Goldman was contacted and he filed for a temporary restraining order, or TRO, on March 17 to block any removal to a third-country. Deportation officers had told Hallac that he was going to be deported — not to Turkey, but to either Germany or Azerbaijan. 

But Goldman noted that neither of those two countries have been accepting deportees.

Goldman sent a letter to the Phoenix ICE Field Office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Arizona, letting them know he was seeking a TRO to stop Hallac’s removal, but didn’t hear anything. 

In June, Goldman got word that Hallac had been sent to an ICE detention facility in Louisiana. A few days later, on June 11, the judge denied the TRO because he wanted Goldman to add an amendment focusing on the third-country removal part. 

But it was too late. 

That night, unbeknownst to Goldman or Hallac’s family, Hallac boarded a plane set for the city of Bangui, the capital and largest city of the Central African Republic. 

“And at that point, it didn’t matter, because he was already deported,” Goldman said about the court asking him to resubmit the TRO. 

Hallac called his family and Goldman the following day. He told them he was in Bangui, that his passport had been taken by Central African Republic authorities and that he was being asked to not leave an apartment they had put him in. 

Hallac was one of 20 people that were deported to the country on that flight, including two Iranian women who were seeking refuge in the U.S., according to reporting by the New York Times. Hallac told Goldman that some of the individuals resisted at first and were placed in full body “wrap” restraints for the duration of the flight. 

It was the Trump administration’s first forced third-country deportation to the Central African Republic. 

It set off a firestorm for Goldman, who wanted to confirm all the details of the deportation he could from ICE officials. 

“An ICE agent got on the phone with me and had a good laugh, because he hadn’t even heard of where my client was deported to,” Goldman said, recalling how the Phoenix ICE didn’t know that Bangui or the Central African Republic existed. “Obviously, it was funny to him — not so funny on our side.”

The country has a level 4 travel advisory from the U.S. State Department and has a history of political violence committed by its own government. 

That concerned Goldman, who worried that the Central African Republic could turn around and deport Hallac to Turkey. Two weeks later, his passport was returned to him, and he quickly booked a flight to Argentina — a country where he knows no one and doesn’t speak the language. 

Prior to his deportation, Hallac fully believed that he would be released, telling family that his non-violent past meant he was not in jeopardy — after all, Trump had campaigned on deporting “the worst of the worst” criminals. He said that he didn’t think his two parking tickets were a cause for concern. 

Goldman has been practicing immigration law for decades, and said this is the first time this sort of situation has happened to one of his clients, but he’s heard from other attorneys that it’s becoming more widespread. That, he said, makes him worried about the future. 

“I want to update the court on where (Hallac) is at and what he is dealing with over there,” Goldman said of next steps. “I think the court needs to know that expediency is really critical at this point for these cases.”