A lawyer for 11 west Africans deported by the US to Ghana said they had been returned to their home countries despite many fearing for their safety.
Under Donald Trump’s drive to ramp up expulsions, the US has sent migrants to third countries, including Rwanda, Uganda and El Salvador, prompting accusations that deportee rights have been violated.
Ghana’s president, John Mahama, said last week that his country had accepted 14 west African nationals deported by the US and was ready to accept 40 more. Officials initially said all 14 had been sent on to their home countries but lawyers for 11 said they were then held in dire conditions in a military camp.
The 11 men filed a legal case seeking to be released. However, their lawyer Oliver Barker-Vormawor told a hearing on Tuesday that most had already been deported, despite eight claiming they could not legally be sent to their home countries “due to the risk of torture, persecution or inhumane treatment”.
“This is precisely the injury we were trying to prevent,” Barker-Vormawor said, adding that the onward deportations meant their lawsuit had become irrelevant.
Of the 11 men, six were sent to Togo and another released to a relative in Ghana, he said.
On 12 September, lawyers in the US filed a case on behalf of five migrants sent to Ghana, who they said should have been protected from being sent on to Nigeria and the Gambia. The lawsuit said the men had been shackled on a plane from a Louisiana detention centre without being told their destination and several were put in straitjackets for 16 hours.
A bisexual man had already been sent from Ghana back to the Gambia, where he had to go into hiding, the US lawyers said. The other four were being held in the military camp.
In another development, Orville Etoria, who is Jamaican, was repatriated on Sunday to his home country from Eswatini, formerly Swaziland. Etoria, who was released from prison in the US in 2021 after serving 24 years for murder, had been deported to Eswatini without notice in July alongside former prisoners from Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and Yemen.
“Mr Orville Isaac Etoria, at his own volition, without any compulsion whatsoever, was voluntarily repatriated back to his home country, Jamaica. Mr Etoria has safely returned to Jamaica, where he was warmly welcomed by members of his family,” Eswatini’s government said.
It said the International Organization for Migration, a UN agency, had supported Etoria’s return and that it was working to have the other four migrants repatriated as well.
“We are pleased to welcome home Mr Etoria and we trust the Jamaican public understands and joins the government in respecting his desire for a quiet return,” said Jamaica’s foreign minister, Kamina Johnson Smith.
Lawyers for the five men said earlier this month they had not been granted access to their clients in a maximum security prison in Eswatini.
A Mexican who the US said had been serving a life sentence for murder was returned to Mexico earlier this month from South Sudan, having been one of eight men deported there in July.
Associated Press and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
