Ghana returns US-deported West Africans amid torture concerns

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 has said the decision to take in West African deportees was not an endorsement of Trump's immigration policy and said that Ghana was not getting anything in return.