By EDWARD ACQUAH and MARK BANCHEREAU, ACCRA, Ghana (AP):- Nineteen West African nationals deported by the U.S. to Ghana have been moved to an unknown location, a lawyer for one of the deportees said.
Ana Dionne-Lanier, who represents one of the nationals, told The Associated Press on Thursday the group arrived in Ghana on Nov. 5 and were put in a hotel. They are protected from deportation to their home countries due to the risk of torture, persecution or inhumane treatment, she said.
“We don’t know the location of any of them,” Dionne-Lanier said, adding that neither she nor her client’s family has been able to reach him.
She said part of the group was sent by bus to an unknown border location between last weekend and Monday, while a second group, which included her client, was moved “under heavy armed guard” from the hotel around Wednesday.
The Ghanaian government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dozens of deportees have been sent to Africa from the U.S. since July after the Trump administration struck largely secretive agreements with at least five African nations — including Eswatini, Rwanda and South Sudan — to take migrants under a new third-country deportation program.
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.
The administration has been seeking ways to deter immigrants from entering the U.S. illegally and remove those who already have done so, especially those accused of crimes and including those who cannot easily be deported to their home countries.
Faced with court decisions that migrants can’t be sent back to their home countries, the Trump administration has increasingly been trying to send them to third countries under agreements with those governments.
Last month, the Ghanaian rights group Democracy Hub filed a lawsuit against Ghana’s government, alleging that its 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.
In September, the U.S. Department of Justice argued in a federal court that it had no power to control how another country treats deportees. It said that Ghana had pledged to the U.S. it wouldn’t send the deportees back to their home countries.
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Banchereau reported from Dakar, Senegal.