What to know about the US deportations to non-citizen African countries

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DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Ghana is the latest African country that has received third-country nationals deported by the U.S. or has agreed to receive them, though the legality of the approach is being questioned.

Eswatini, Rwanda and South Sudan have also taken in such deportees, and Uganda has agreed to a deal with the U.S. to take certain deported immigrants, though it hasn't yet received any.

Experts have said some countries may accept the deportees to earn goodwill in negotiations with the Trump administration on policies such as trade, migration and aid.

Ghanaian authorities said Monday that 14 deportees the country received last week have been returned to their home countries. Lawyers for four of the men said they were still detained in the country as of Monday evening, and the different accounts could not immediately be reconciled.

The immigrants the U.S. government deported to Ghana included 13 Nigerians and one Gambian. None of them were originally from Ghana.

It was not immediately clear when they arrived in Ghana. Court documents show they were awoken in the middle of the night on Sept. 5 and not told where they were going until hours into the flight on a U.S. military cargo plane.

Some of the deportees had no ties with the country, nor did they designate it as a potential country of removal, according to the lawsuit they filed in U.S. through their lawyers.

Ghana’s Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said his country accepted the deportees “purely on humanitarian principle” and because they were fellow West Africans.

“We just could not continue to take the suffering of our fellow West Africans,” Ablakwa said. “So we thought that since there was a vacuum in West Africa, we should step in as part of our Pan-African credentials to take care of West Africans,” he said, suggesting that Ghana agreed to the request because some other West African nations had rejected the request to receive third-country deportees.

Ghana’s Minister for Government Communications Felix Kwakye Ofosu told the AP on Monday that the 14 migrants “have since left for their home countries,” without providing further details.

As of last week, the arrangement was for a bus to transport the Nigerians back home, a journey that typically takes seven to eight hours, Ghanaian President John Mahama, told reporters at the time.

Nigerian officials said they were not briefed by either Ghana or U.S. about the deportations, and expressed shock that the Nigerians were sent to other countries when some citizens have been deported directly from U.S. 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.

Many of the countries that have agreed to such deportation deals are in Latin America and Africa.

The U.S. has sent hundreds of Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Venezuelans and immigrants from Afghanistan, Russia, Iran, China and other countries have also been sent to Costa Rica and Panama.

Last month, Paraguay signed a third-country agreement with the Trump administration. Mexico has not signed such an agreement, but has accepted deportees from Central America and other Western Hemisphere countries, including Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela.

The Trump administration’s deportation program has faced widespread criticism from human rights experts who cite international protections for asylum-seekers and question whether immigrants will be appropriately screened before being deported.

A lawyer representing the Gambian sent to Ghana told the AP the deportee and several others had an order prohibiting their return for fear of torture in their countries.

Rights groups have also argued that most of the African countries that have received such deportees have one thing in common: A poor human rights record, with government critics often targeted.

The immigrants deported to Ghana were detained there in “abysmal and deplorable” conditions after being held in “straitjackets” for 16 hours on the flight, according to the U.S. lawsuit filed by lawyers for some of them.

Ghanaian authorities denied the claim about detention conditions and said they had no knowledge of the situation of the deportees as they flew to Ghana.

Sending the deportees to their countries despite the legal orders prohibiting such over fear of their safety is “a clear violation of the duties both countries have” to protect the migrants amid such risks, said Maureen A. Sweeney, immigration lawyer and professor of law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law.

“This is part of a pattern by the U.S. government of extreme indifference (at least) to the government’s obligations and to the human consequences of its mass deportation campaign,” Sweeney said.