A group of 14 people has become the latest West Africans deported from the United States to Ghana under an accord between the two countries, according to a lawyer whose organisation has filed a lawsuit seeking to block the arrangement.
Oliver Barker-Vormawor, who represents migrants, said the latest group of 14 West African nationals arrived on Monday, bringing the total number of deportees accepted by the Ghanaian government to 42.
His group, Democracy Hub, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against Ghana’s government, alleging that the agreement with Washington is unconstitutional because it was not approved by parliament and may violate conventions that forbid sending people to countries where they could face persecution.
Government spokesman Felix Kwakye Ofosu said the attorney general would defend the arrangement in court but declined to comment further.
The administration of former US President Donald Trump began a crackdown on migrants who entered the country illegally, targeting those with criminal records, including individuals who could not easily be deported to their home countries.
Dozens of deportees have been sent to Africa since July after the Trump administration struck largely secretive agreements with at least five African nations to take migrants under a new third-country deportation programme.
Rights groups have criticised the programme, saying it is opaque and sends deportees to countries where they have no ties and are likely to be denied due process. Critics also claim that, in some cases, migrants have been deported to third countries even when their home countries were willing to accept them.
Last month, the US deported an initial group of 14 West African immigrants to Ghana. Authorities later said all of the deportees had been sent to their home countries elsewhere in West Africa, including Togo, Nigeria, and Mali.
However, their lawyers told the Associated Press in September that 11 of them were still being held at a military camp on the outskirts of Accra “in what they described as terrible conditions.” Since then, Barker-Vormawor said, ten of those migrants have been deported to Togo, even though only two are Togolese.
The US earlier sent a first group of five deportees to Eswatini in July, saying they had been convicted of serious crimes, including murder and child rape.
Since then, Washington has also deported other migrants to South Sudan, Rwanda, and Ghana, and has an agreement with Uganda, though no deportations there have been announced.
Six deportees are still detained in an unspecified facility in South Sudan, while Rwanda has not disclosed where it is holding seven others.
