Eight migrants allegedly deported to wrong countries under Trump administration
Human rights lawyers filed a regional lawsuit accusing Ghana of forcing U.S.-deported migrants back to dangerous countries despite court protections, exemplifying broader "chain refoulement" concerns.
Objective Facts
Between September and November 2025, at least 60 people were deported from the United States to Ghana, many of whom had been granted humanitarian protections by U.S. immigration judges. Of 30 noncitizens deported to Ghana in 2025, at least 22 were subsequently sent by Ghana to their home countries despite U.S. court orders barring their direct return based on risks of persecution or torture. Some migrants were deported to Togo, including two women granted protection against return who had fled female genital mutilation, and Ghanaian authorities drove one Nigerian woman to the Ghana-Togo border and paid taxi drivers to transport her through Togo to Nigeria, where she had been granted Convention Against Torture protection. On June 30, 2026, advocacy groups filed a regional court complaint accusing Ghana of complicity with the Trump administration, covering 27 of at least 60 migrants deported to Ghana since September 2025. Ghanaian authorities have been notably silent on the agreement's terms, though the United States reversed visa curbs it had placed on Ghana shortly after the agreement came into effect.
Left-Leaning Perspective
Mainstream left outlets focused on the specific harms and legal violations revealed by the Ghana deportations case. The Washington Post reported that when a judge ruled a woman should not be deported to Togo, the Trump administration sent her to Ghana—which returned her to Togo. The Washington Post also noted that at least 11 of the 14 migrants on that flight had judicial protections against deportation to their home countries. NPR covered the regional court lawsuit filing as a major legal development in the ongoing dispute over third-country deportations. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan noted that she was 'alarmed and dismayed by the circumstances under which these removals are being carried out, especially in light of the government's cavalier acceptance of Plaintiffs' ultimate transfer to countries where they face torture and persecution'.
Right-Leaning Perspective
Right-leaning outlets provided minimal coverage of the Ghana deportation lawsuit. Fox News reported the basic facts of the lawsuit filing without editorial commentary. CNN reported that Stephen Miller led a multiagency call questioning why countries were not accepting more deportees, noting that the architect of Trump's immigration agenda had overseen a deportation machine that expelled more than 675,000 undocumented immigrants. The right framed the third-country deportation policy as a legitimate immigration enforcement tool facing legal challenges from advocates. Right-leaning sources did not engage substantively with the specific angle of migrants being deported to wrong countries in violation of court orders.
Deep Dive
The specific angle of the Ghana deportation story—migrants deported to a country they never identified as a destination and then sent to a third wrong country entirely—exemplifies a fundamental tension in Trump administration immigration enforcement. Federal courts have repeatedly blocked direct deportations to certain countries based on torture and persecution risks established under the Convention Against Torture and asylum law. The administration responded by creating a system of "third-country removals," sending people to intermediate countries that lack the legal protections U.S. courts established. In the Ghana case, this created an absurd and tragic result: a woman who fled Togo to escape female genital mutilation, whom a U.S. court protected from return to Togo, was deported to Ghana (a country she never mentioned) only for Ghanaian authorities to send her back through Togo to her home country. Multiple other deportees experienced similar or worse outcomes—some ending up in countries they'd never heard of, some kidnapped or assaulted after reaching wrong destinations, one Gambian man sent to a country where his sexual orientation is criminalized. The February 2026 Massachusetts federal court ruling declared the entire third-country removal policy unlawful precisely because it lacks meaningful notice and opportunity for deportees to contest removal. Yet the Trump administration appealed and the stay remains in place, allowing deportations to continue even as courts find the policy violates due process. The June 2026 regional court lawsuit filed in Ghana represents a new legal front, arguing Ghana itself violated international non-refoulement obligations by participating in the scheme. What the left and right fundamentally disagree on is whether this outcome constitutes a system malfunction or the system working as intended. Left analysts argue the administration designed a mechanism to circumvent court orders by using intermediary countries as legal cover. Right analysts argue the administration is using available legal tools to deport people its judges cannot directly return, and that individual cases of people reaching wrong destinations are implementation errors, not design failures. The facts support both narratives in tension: the policy was clearly designed to circumvent jurisdictional barriers, but whether officials knowingly engineered the specific harms that resulted to individual deportees remains contested. What is undisputed is that people with U.S. court orders protecting them from deportation ended up in the exact countries those courts forbid, contradicting the entire premise of the protective orders. The litigation will likely turn on whether the administration can be held responsible for knowing that intermediate countries would re-deport protected persons, or whether U.S. responsibility ends once the person leaves U.S. custody.
Regional Perspective
Ghana's government has defended the arrangement with the United States, with President John Dramani Mahama saying Ghana agreed to accept some deportees from the US because of regional free movement arrangements within West Africa, stating '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'. However, regional outlets and Ghanaian civil society organizations have challenged this framing. The case filed before ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) Court is believed to be the first brought under the 1979 ECOWAS Free Movement Protocol, and lawyers say a ruling could have implications beyond Ghana by clarifying how far ECOWAS member states can cooperate with third-country deportation agreements. Beatrice Njeri, regional litigator for Africa at the Global Strategic Litigation Council, says migration cooperation cannot come at the expense of refugee protection or international law, noting that agreements that externalise asylum and migration responsibilities to third countries carry a high risk of human rights abuses. The regional legal challenge reflects a broader West African concern that the Ghana arrangement violates both the ECOWAS Free Movement Protocol and international non-refoulement obligations, establishing a precedent that could affect other African nations considering similar deals with the Trump administration. In Ghana itself, the pressure group Democracy Hub led by activist and lawyer Oliver Barker-Vormawor filed a petition with the Supreme Court of Ghana challenging the legality of the entire deportation arrangement.