Eleven West African nationals deported by the United States to Ghana have been returned to their home countries, despite fears they could face torture, persecution or inhumane treatment.
The group, who arrived in Ghana with three other US deportees, had filed a lawsuit to stay their deportation, but when it came to court on Tuesday, their lawyer said they had been removed over the weekend, and the suit was therefore irrelevant.
‘We have to inform the court that the persons whose human rights we are seeking to enforce were all deported over the weekend’, their lawyer, Oliver Barker-Vormawor, told the court Tuesday at a virtual hearing.
‘This is precisely the injury we were trying to prevent’, he said of the safety concerns of the deportees.
The lawsuit had argued that, at least, eight of the deportees in question had been granted protection by US immigration judges against deportation to their home countries due to safety concerns.
The group included four Nigerians, three Togolese, two Malians, one Liberian and one Gambian. Six of them are now in Togo, while the whereabouts of the other five is unknown, their lawyer said.
Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama told reporters this month his government had agreed to take in nationals from other West African countries who were being deported from the US under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The Ghanaian government had defended accepting the deportees, saying that their decision to take in West Africa deportees was on humanitarian grounds, rather than an endorsement of Trump’s immigration policy.
Ghana’s Foreign Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, had pushed back on criticism that the decision was an endorsement of US President Donald Trump’s migration policies, saying Ghana accepted the third-country deportees ‘purely on humanitarian grounds’.
At a press briefing in the capital, Accra on Monday, Ablakwa said Ghana did not receive any financial compensation from the US over the deportation.
‘We should rather be seen as a country that wants to look out for its fellow Africans, that is why we made it clear to the Americans that we will not accept $1’, the minister said of the rationale behind the government’s decision.
Nigeria’s government said it was not briefed about its nationals being sent to Ghana and that previously it had received Nigerians deported directly from the US.
