A lawyer claims that West Africans deployed to Ghana by the United States have been deported
Their attorney announced on Tuesday that eleven West Africans who were sent from the United States to Ghana as part of a deal with the Trump administration had been deported a second time, despite concerns that some of them may have been subjected to torture and persecution.
Oliver Barker-Vormawor, the lawyer, told Reuters following a court hearing that at least six of them are currently in neighboring Togo, while the other five’s locations remain unclear.
A request for feedback from a representative of the Ghanaian government was not answered.
There were two Malians, one Liberian, three Togolese, four Nigerians, and one Gambian in the group.
This month, President John Dramani Mahama of Ghana informed reporters that his government has consented to accept citizens of other West African nations who were being deported from the United States as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
On behalf of 11 of the 14 deportees who arrived first, Barker-Vormawor filed a complaint last week, requesting that a court in Accra halt any attempt to send them back to their countries of origin.
He informed the court, however, that the group had been deported over the weekend at the Tuesday hearing.
The case that Barker-Vormawor had filed was now “moot” and was being withdrawn. “This is precisely the injury we were trying to prevent,” he said.
Later, Barker-Vormawor told Reuters that “information suggests another 14 have arrived,” although he did not provide any confirmation.
Barker-Vormawor’s lawsuit had claimed that U.S. immigration judges had protected at least eight of the deportees he was defending from being transported back to their home countries because they were at risk of torture, persecution, or cruel treatment.
The government of Mahama has stated that Ghana was receiving nothing in exchange for accepting West African deportees and that this choice did not amount to an endorsement of Trump’s immigration policy.
