New group of western deportees arrives in Ghana from United States
The Mt Kenya Times 
By: Norman Mwale
ACCRA —Another group of West African nationals deported from the United States has been sent to Ghana under a third-country removal arrangement pursued by the Trump administration, with at least one of the individuals holding US court-ordered protection from deportation to his home country, a lawyer involved in the case said on Saturday.
The exact number in the latest batch was not immediately confirmed, but Meredyth Yoon, a US-based lawyer associated with one of the deportation cases, said the group arrived in Accra on Thursday. The deportees form part of a wider policy in which Washington has sought agreements that allow it to send people to countries where they have no ties, as part of what President Donald Trump has described as a vast immigration crackdown targeting unauthorised immigrants who would typically have been permitted to remain under previous administrations.
Since last year, Ghana has been accepting West Africans temporarily before onward removal to their countries of origin, including people whom US immigration judges found would face persecution if returned home. Ghanaian authorities have previously stated that many of those transferred to Accra have already been sent back to their home countries, although lawyers in the United States say some deportees have instead been held in military detention in “cruel conditions”.
The Guinean man represented by Yoon had been granted “withholding of removal”, a legal protection that is weaker than asylum but has historically superseded a deportation order, allowing the individual to live and work in the United States. “The man had ‘withholding of removal’,” Yoon said, adding that such protection should have prevented his removal to a country where he could be at risk.
Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama confirmed earlier this month that his government had agreed to take in nationals from other West African countries who were being deported from the US under the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Speaking to reporters, he said Ghana had accepted 14 people in an initial group, including several Nigerians and one Gambian, under the ECOWAS protocol on free movement, which permits regional nationals to enter the country. “On humanitarian grounds, pan-African solidarity, let us accept our fellow West Africans. And let’s make the point that Ghana is your home,” Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa told Channel1 TV late Wednesday. He added that the deportees, who are vetted before arrival, would be allowed to remain in Ghana temporarily or return to their home countries.
However, the arrangement has drawn sharp criticism from human rights lawyers and civil society groups. Oliver Barker-Vormawor, a Ghanaian lawyer who has represented 11 of the deportees in court, told the press that his clients were detained at Bundase Military Camp, an active military training base outside Accra, without access to running water, bedding or adequate healthcare. “The place was not designed to keep humans,” Barker-Vormawor said of the conditions the deportees described to him. He said women had been denied sanitary products and those who were sick were denied medical care.
Barker-Vormawor filed a lawsuit in Accra seeking to block the removal of 11 deportees to their home countries, arguing that at least eight had been granted protection by US immigration judges against deportation due to risks of torture, persecution or inhumane treatment. At a virtual hearing on Tuesday, he told the court that the group had nevertheless been deported over the weekend. “This is precisely the injury we were trying to prevent,” he said, adding that the lawsuit had become “moot” and was being withdrawn. He later told Reuters that at least six of the men were now in neighbouring Togo, while the whereabouts of the other five remained unknown. “Information suggests another 14 have arrived,” he said, though he had not confirmed the figure.
Ghanaian immigration services did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment on the latest arrivals. A government spokesperson, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, told RFI last week that “all deportees have left Ghana for their respective home countries”. Yet lawyers maintain that some deportees remain in detention or have been transferred to third countries without due process. Samantha Hamilton, an attorney for Asian Americans Advancing Justice, said that six people from a previous group were allegedly taken across the border to Togo under armed guard. “The deportees were forced by armed military guards to climb wire fences,” Hamilton said. “A woman in her late 50s was thrown on the back of a motorcycle and smuggled across the border.”
The Trump administration’s deportation programme has faced widespread criticism from human rights experts who cite international protections for asylum-seekers and question whether immigrants are being appropriately screened before removal. The administration has increasingly sought to send migrants to third countries under agreements with those governments when home countries refuse or delay repatriation.
Mahama’s government has insisted that the decision to take in West African deportees did not amount to an endorsement of US immigration policy and that Ghana was “not getting anything in return”. Nevertheless, the practice has raised concerns among lawyers and rights groups who argue that Ghana is undermining national sovereignty and flouting international protocols. “Ghana and the US are accused of bargaining with lives over West African deportees,” Barker-Vormawor said, warning that individuals with US court protections were still being removed to countries where they faced harm.
For now, the latest arrivals are expected to be processed by Ghanaian authorities in line with the existing arrangement, though the lack of transparency around numbers, detention conditions and onward removals continues to fuel legal challenges and diplomatic scrutiny.
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