Ghana rights group files lawsuit against government’s acceptance of US deportees

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — A group of 14 people have become the latest West Africans deported from the U.S. to Ghana under an accord between the countries, said a lawyer whose group filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block the arrangement.

Oliver Barker-Vormawor, who represents migrants, said the latest group of 14 West African nationals arrived Monday to bring the overall total to 42 deportees accepted by the Ghanaian government.

His group, Democracy Hub, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Ghana ‘s government, alleging that the agreement with Washington is unconstitutional because it wasn’t approved by the Ghanaian parliament and that it may violate conventions that forbid sending people to countries where they could face persecution.

Government spokesman Felix Kwakye Ofosu said the attorney general would defend the arrangement in court, but otherwise declined to comment.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has been cracking down on migrants who have entered the country illegally, saying that it is especially targeting those with criminal records, including those who cannot easily be deported to their home countries.

Dozens of deportees have been sent to Africa since July after the Trump administration struck largely secretive agreements with at least five African nations to take migrants under a new third-country deportation program.

Rights groups have protested the program, saying it is opaque and sends deportees to countries where they have no ties and where they are likely to be denied due process. In some cases, migrants have been deported to third countries even when their home countries would have accepted them, critics say.

Last month, the U.S. deported an initial group of 14 West African immigrants to Ghana, where authorities later said all of the deportees had been sent to their home countries elsewhere in West Africa, including Togo, Nigeria and Mali.

However, their lawyers told The Associated Press in September that 11 of them still were being held at a military camp on the outskirts of the capital, Accra, in what they described as terrible conditions. Since then, 10 of those migrants have been deported to Togo even though only two are Togolese, Barker-Vormawor said.

The U.S. sent a first group of five deportees to Eswatini in July, saying they had been convicted of serious crimes including murder and child rape.

Since then the U.S. also has deported other migrants to South Sudan, Rwanda and Ghana. It also has an agreement with Uganda, though no deportations there have been announced.

Six deportees are still detained in an unspecified facility in South Sudan, while Rwanda hasn’t said where it is holding seven deportees.