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, the Ghanaian government spokesman told The Associated Press on Monday.
Authorities in Ghana have defended accepting the deportees on humanitarian grounds. The deportees, including 13 Nigerians and one Gambian, “have since left for their home countries,” Felix Kwakye Ofosu, Ghana’s minister for government communications, told the AP.
At a press briefing in the capital of Accra on Monday, Ghana’s Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa 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.”
A U.S. federal judge had ordered the U.S. government to detail Saturday night 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 a flight to Ghana and detained for days in “squalid conditions” after they arrived there.
It wasn’t clear when they were deported to Ghana, but first news came from the government on Wednesday.
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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