ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — A group of 14 West Africans deported from the U.S. to Ghana have all been sent to their home countries of Nigeria and Gambia, a Ghanaian government spokesman said on Monday, as officials pushed back on criticism of the deportation whose legality has been questioned by lawyers of the deportees. Authorities […]
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West Africans deported by US to Ghana have all been sent to their home countries
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ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — A group of 14 West Africans deported from the U.S. to Ghana have all been sent to their home countries of Nigeria and Gambia, a Ghanaian government spokesman said on Monday, as officials pushed back on criticism of the deportation whose legality has been questioned by lawyers of the deportees.
Authorities in Ghana have defended accepting the deportees on humanitarian grounds. The 13 Nigerians and one Gambian “have since left for their home countries,” Felix Kwakye Ofosu, Ghana’s minister for government communications, told The Associated Press.
Ghana’s Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has pushed back on criticism that the decision was an endorsement of U.S. President Donald Trump’s migration policies, saying that Ghana accepted the third-country deportees “purely on humanitarian principle.”
At a press briefing in the capital, Accra, on Monday, Ablakwa said Ghana did not receive any financial compensation form the U.S. over the deportation.
“We just could not continue to take the suffering of our fellow West Africans,” the minister said of the rationale behind the government’s decision. “For now, the strict understanding that we have with the Americans is that we are only going to take West Africans,” he added.
Nigeria’s government said it was not briefed about its nationals being sent to Ghana and that previously it had received Nigerians deported directly from the U.S.
“We have not rejected Nigerians deported to Nigeria. What we have only rejected is deportation of other nationals into Nigeria,” Kimebi Imomotimi Ebienfa, a spokesperson for Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told AP.
The authorities in Gambia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A U.S. federal judge ordered the U.S. government to detail on Saturday how it was trying to ensure Ghana would not send the immigrants elsewhere in violation of domestic U.S. court orders. The administration’s agreements with so-called third countries like Ghana are part of a sweeping immigration crackdown seeking to deport millions of people who are living in the United States illegally.
A U.S. lawsuit filed on behalf of some of the migrants said they were held in “straitjackets” for 16 hours on the flight to Ghana and detained for days in “squalid conditions” after they arrived there.
It wasn’t clear when the group was deported to Ghana, whose president, John Mahama, said in a statement last Wednesday that they were in the country.
The opposition and activists in Ghana have criticized the decision to accept the third-country deportees as going against the law. Opposition lawmakers said it raises “serious constitutional, sovereignty and foreign policy concerns which cannot be overlooked.”
None of the 14 deportees were originally from Ghana and the five West Africans who filed the lawsuit did not have ties with the country or designate it as a potential country of removal, according to the complaint.
Lawyers and activists have said the Trump administration appears to be making such deportation requests to the nations most affected by his policies on trade, migration and aid.
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AP journalist Ope Adetayo in Lagos, Nigeria contributed.
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