A federal judge has ordered U.S. officials to facilitate the release and return of Ahmed Soliman, a gay man who grew up in Phoenix and was deported to Equatorial Guinea despite having no ties to the country.

There is now movement toward complying with that order.

On October 9, NPR reported that the government had begun working with his lawyers to locate and contact him and start arranging his return. His arrival back in the United States has not been confirmed.

Soliman came to the U.S. from Egypt at four. He later became a lawful permanent resident. Criminal convictions led to imprisonment and immigration removal proceedings.

But an immigration judge granted him protection against removal to Egypt, finding that he faced a clear probability of torture because of his sexual orientation and his family’s political background.

U.S. officials instead deported him to Equatorial Guinea in April.

In an October 6 order, U.S. District Judge John C. Hinderaker found that Soliman had been removed without notice or a meaningful opportunity to raise fears about being sent there. The judge ruled that the government violated his due-process rights.

The court record describes what followed: confinement under armed guard, threats at gunpoint, beatings and detention without communication with his family or lawyers.

Soliman had spoken to journalists about conditions after his deportation. His subsequent detention left those trying to help him unable to maintain contact.

The judge ordered officials to facilitate his release and return, and to handle his case as it would have been handled had he not been improperly removed. Any further third-country removal must include notice and a meaningful opportunity to be heard.

The ruling does not grant him permanent permission to stay in the United States. DHS has said it will comply with lawful court orders while continuing to pursue his removal.

That distinction matters. So does the protection at the heart of this case: criminal convictions do not remove a person’s right to due process or make torture an acceptable consequence.

For Soliman and the people waiting for news of him, the next milestone is practical and urgent—release from custody, confirmed safety and an actual return.

📷 Ahmed Soliman photograph courtesy of Kate O’Donnell.

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Michael Kearns made a deeply personal announcement on television in 1991: he was living with HIV. At a time of devastating stigma, the openly gay actor wanted other people to know that their diagnosis was nothing to be ashamed of.

Kearns died October 5, aged 76. Journalist and longtime friend Karen Ocamb reported his death in the Los Angeles Blade, with Entertainment Weekly publishing a new obituary October 9.

His career crossed television, film and theater. Audiences saw him in shows including Cheers and Beverly Hills, 90210, and in the television film And the Band Played On, which explored the early AIDS epidemic.

In 1992, after making his own HIV status public, he appeared in Life Goes On as a character living with the virus.

That visibility mattered in an industry where gay performers had often been encouraged to remain private, and where HIV carried another burden of fear and discrimination.

Kearns also worked to make room for stories outside mainstream entertainment. He co-founded Artists Confronting AIDS and directed Robert Chesley’s Jerker, bringing gay men’s experiences of intimacy and the AIDS crisis to the stage.

For readers who lived through those years, his story recalls how much courage it could take simply to speak publicly. Visibility came from individuals willing to put their own lives into the conversation.

His personal life held love, loss and fatherhood.

Ocamb remembers attending his wedding with Philip Juwig, who died in 1992. Later, Kearns became an adoptive father to Tia Katherine, now known as Katherine.

She was part of a life much larger than a diagnosis or an acting résumé: family, friendship, creativity and the everyday work of raising a child.

Remembering Kearns means remembering all of those parts together. His advocacy was connected to the lives he wanted people to recognize—their relationships, their humor, their ambitions and their capacity to care for one another.

He leaves behind decades of work that helped gay people and people living with HIV see themselves represented, and helped audiences see the human beings behind the stigma.

Our thoughts are with Katherine and everyone who loved him.

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Dillon Bacchetta had two reasons to feel nervous about trying out for his college’s soccer team. He had never played the sport before.

And, after growing up gay and experiencing bullying, joining a group of mostly straight men felt like a risk.

He made the team anyway. His first college match ended in a 33–0 defeat.

That scoreline was painful. The relationships that followed became something he treasured.

In a first-person essay published by Outsports on October 7, Bacchetta looks back on how soccer helped him find confidence and friendship as an openly gay man.

He had spent years competing as a cheerleader. When he arrived at Atlantic Cape Community College in New Jersey and found there was no cheerleading team, he chose a sport he had always wanted to try.

He practiced on his own before tryouts. Being a beginner meant entering the team without the experience he had built in cheerleading, while carrying fears shaped by the way other boys had treated him growing up.

His new teammates gave him a different experience.

They helped him learn soccer. Friendship grew around ordinary conversations, jokes and advice about relationships. They could talk about girls; he could talk about boys. His sexuality did not become an obstacle to getting close.

For someone accustomed to watching how he spoke and behaved around other men, that ease mattered. He could relax into being a teammate and a friend.

By the end of the season, Bacchetta had become a starter and earned recognition for his improvement. Atlantic Cape’s own account of its 2025 athletics awards also lists him as the men’s soccer team’s Most Improved Athlete.

The personal change reached beyond the field. Learning to trust other men gave him something years of bullying had made difficult to imagine.

His story leaves room for a quieter kind of sporting success: people helping each other, sharing everyday parts of their lives and discovering that they belong together.

A crushing defeat was part of Dillon’s introduction to soccer. So was finding friends who wanted him on their team.

📷 Instagram: @dillbacc

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