Ofure Akhigbe
A group of 14 people has become the latest West Africans deported from the United States to Ghana under a bilateral accord, according to a lawyer whose organization filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block the arrangement.
Oliver Barker-Vormawor, representing the migrants, said the new arrivals landed in Ghana on Monday, bringing the total number of deportees accepted by the Ghanaian government to 42. His group, Democracy Hub, filed suit against the government on Tuesday, arguing that the agreement with Washington is unconstitutional because it was not approved by Parliament and may breach international conventions prohibiting the transfer of people to countries where they risk persecution.
Government spokesman Felix Kwakye Ofosu said the attorney general would defend the arrangement in court but declined further comment.
The deportations stem from the Trump administration’s migrant removal policy, which officials say targets individuals with criminal records or those who cannot easily be returned to their home countries. Since July, the U.S. has deported dozens of African migrants under a new, largely secretive third-country deportation program involving at least five African nations.
Rights groups have condemned the program as opaque and arbitrary, claiming it sends deportees to countries where they have no ties and denies them due process. In some cases, migrants have been sent to third countries even when their home nations were willing to accept them.
Last month, the U.S. deported an initial group of 14 West Africans to Ghana. Authorities later said those deportees were sent onward to their home countries, including Togo, Nigeria, and Mali. However, lawyers told the Associated Press in September that 11 of them were being held at a military camp outside Accra in poor conditions. Ten have since been deported to Togo, though only two are Togolese, Barker-Vormawor said.
The U.S. launched the program in July 2025, sending a first group of five deportees to Eswatini, saying they had been convicted of serious crimes, including murder and child rape. Since then, deportations have also been carried out to South Sudan, Rwanda, and Ghana. The U.S. has a similar agreement with Uganda, though no deportations there have been reported.
Six deportees remain in detention in South Sudan, while Rwanda has not disclosed the whereabouts of seven others.