ACCRA (Reuters) – A lawyer for 11 West Africans deported from the United States to Ghana has filed a lawsuit asking a court in Accra to block any move to send them on to their home countries, arguing they are at risk of torture and persecution.
Ghana 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 United States under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
He said authorities would help the deportees return to their home countries and some had already made the journey.
The lawsuit, filed in Ghana this week by lawyer Oliver Barker-Vormawor, said 11 people deported under that scheme included nationals of Nigeria, Liberia, Togo, Gambia and Mali.
His application, seen by Reuters on Friday, said U.S. immigration judges had previously granted at least eight of the deportees protection from removal to their home countries “due to the risk of torture, persecution or inhumane treatment”.
It asked the High Court in Accra to block any attempts to move them on.
A Ghanaian government spokesperson did not respond to questions this week about the status of the deportees and how many remain in Ghana.
As of Thursday evening, five of them were held in what is believed to be a military facility in Ghana, according to Meredyth Yoon, litigation director from the campaign group Asian Americans Advancing Justice, which filed a separate lawsuit on behalf of the deportees in the United States.
Six others were also in Ghana but had been taken to a different facility, Barker-Vormawor said.
A U.S. federal judge sharply criticized the deportations on Monday, saying they appeared to be an attempt to skirt U.S. immigration courts by quickly sending them to another nation. But she said she lacked jurisdiction to take up the case.
Ghana Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said on Monday that Ghana agreed to accept the deportees for humanitarian reasons as they risked being sent to unsafe countries. He said the decision was not an endorsement of Trump’s immigration policies.
Ablakwa told a local television station on Wednesday that another 40 deportees could arrive “in the next few days”.
(Reporting by Emmanuel Bruce in Accra and Robbie Corey-Boulet in Dakar; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
