During the past couple of weeks, Ghana has been front and center in the conversation surrounding the United States’ plan to deport illegal immigrants to third-party countries.
Ghana, much like Eswatini, recently announced that it would be taking in deported citizens from the U.S., despite not deriving anything in return.
“We were approached by the U.S. to accept third-party nationals who were being removed from the U.S., and we agreed with them that West African nationals were acceptable because all our fellow West Africans don’t need a visa to come to our country,” the Ghanaian president disclosed.
In light of this, and the broader conversation on deportees concerning the West African gold coast, Ghana’s Foreign Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, noted that Ghana does not necessarily agree with Washington’s deportation polices, but the country looked at the humanitarian aspect of things.
Given that the deportees were held in U.S. prisons, the Ghanaian Foreign Minister noted that Ghana’s decision was “grounded purely on humanitarian principle and Pan-African empathy.”
He added, “This should not be misconstrued as an endorsement of the immigration policies of the Trump administration.”
He also disclosed that Ghana was not being compensated for its actions, as seen on Reuters.
The agreement is “not transactional” and Ghana “has not received and does not seek any financial compensation or material benefit in relation to this understanding,” he said.
To prevent “hardened criminals” from entering the nation, Ghana will screen the deportees, he continued.
Dilemma of U.S. deportees in Ghana
As recently reported, migrants deported from the United States to Ghana now face the possibility of being sent back to their home countries, despite US guarantees that they will be protected from persecution or torture.
Tanya Chutkan, a US judge, questioned the deportations and asked the administration how it plans to avoid more of these sorts of situations.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice filed a case urging a judge to suspend the Trump scheme, pointing out that none of the 14 deportees were originally from Ghana, and the five West Africans launching the petition had no links to the nation or specified it as a location of removal.
The group, which includes three Nigerians and two Gambians, says they were secretly flown out of a detention centre in Louisiana, shackled on a military cargo plane, and left in Ghana without proper notice.
Their case, filed in Washington, DC, challenges the legitimacy of the deportation and raises new concerns about America’s practice of shipping migrants to third-party African nations.
According to a complaint filed Friday, four migrants are about to be sent back to their home countries, while one has already been deported to The Gambia and gone into hiding due to his sexual orientation.
The lawyers also stated that inmates had been visited by representatives from their home countries and may be released from Ghana within days.
Trump’s deportation plan
Donald Trump’s administration passed a contentious deportation program that makes it possible for migrants to be deported not just to their home countries, but also to “third-party countries” with which they have no links.
The plan allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport migrants with as little as six hours’ notice, raising worries about due process and safety. Human rights experts fear that transporting vulnerable people to new nations may subject them to persecution and misery.
Several African countries have already been included in the system, including Eswatini and Rwanda, which recently inked an agreement to admit up to 250 migrants under the arrangement.
Ghana’s decision to accept U.S. deportees comes as other African countries, such as Rwanda and Eswatini, are under international criticism for collaborating with Western deportation practices.
Observers claim that the US and European governments are outsourcing migration concerns to African countries, frequently without enough safeguards for those impacted.
For Ghana, the episode emphasizes the delicate balance between humanitarian obligation, regional unity, and maintaining diplomatic relations with the United States.
As Ablakwa pointed out, the country will continue to screen deportees to prevent serious criminals from crossing its borders, but the government argues that its actions are motivated by principle rather than politics.
