Ghanaian officials have dismissed allegations that four African migrants deported from the United States remain in local custody, insisting that every individual has already been repatriated to their countries of origin.
The government had announced on Monday that all 14 deportees were returned to West Africa. According to presidential spokesperson Felix Kwakye Ofosu, 13 Nigerians were transported home by bus, while one Gambian was flown back by air. “None of them are staying in this country. Nobody is being held in any camp and nobody’s right has been abused,” Ofosu told The Associated Press in a phone interview on Tuesday.
But U.S. attorneys representing four of the Nigerians argued otherwise, telling AP and a federal court that their clients remained confined in Ghana. They warned that the men faced persecution in Nigeria, though a judge rejected their bid to have them returned to the United States.
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The AP said it could not independently verify the migrants’ whereabouts, but a separate lawyer confirmed that the Gambian deportee was indeed back in Gambia. Nigerian and Gambian officials, however, said they were not informed about the removals.
The case landed before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who said she had no authority to block Ghana from sending migrants on to their home countries once they had left American soil. She acknowledged her frustration, saying she was “alarmed and dismayed” by the “government’s cavalier acceptance of Plaintiffs’ ultimate transfer to countries where they face torture and persecution,” warning that such deportations may violate an international treaty against torture.
Chutkan compared the situation to the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man deported to El Salvador despite court orders, but concluded that U.S. officials were within their rights to transfer the African migrants to Ghana.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security offered no immediate comment. The Trump administration has consistently pursued measures to expel migrants, including those shielded from direct return to their home countries, by sending them to third-party states.
Ghana is among several African nations, including Rwanda, Eswatini, and South Sudan, that have accepted deportees from the United States under such arrangements.
In court filings, lawyers for some of the deportees described harsh treatment, alleging they were strapped in “straitjackets” for 16 hours on the flight to Ghana and kept in “squalid conditions” afterward. The suit accused Ghana of carrying out the Trump administration’s “dirty work.”
