A U.S. federal judge, Tanya Chutkan, on Saturday criticised the administration of President Donald Trump for allegedly attempting to bypass immigration laws by deporting Nigerian and Gambian migrants to Ghana.
Chutkan, sitting in Washington, D.C., said the move appeared to be an “end run” around U.S. legal safeguards against sending migrants to countries where they face persecution.
She said during an emergency hearing, “These are not speculative concerns. The concerns are real enough that the United States government agrees they shouldn’t be sent back to their home country.”
The judge directed the administration to explain by 9 p.m. EDT what steps it was taking to prevent Ghana from further transferring the deportees to Nigeria or Gambia.
The ruling followed reports that Ghana’s President, John Dramani Mahama, had confirmed an agreement with the U.S. to accept West African deportees. Mahama said 14 people, including Nigerians and Gambians, had already been received.
A lawsuit filed Friday revealed disturbing details of how the migrants were allegedly treated.
Lawyers said five men were removed from a Louisiana detention centre, shackled, and flown on a U.S. military plane without being told their destination. Some were reportedly restrained in straitjackets for 16 hours.
One plaintiff, a bisexual man, was deported to Gambia and has since gone into hiding, while four others are being held under harsh conditions at a Ghanaian military facility.
The Department of Justice argued that since the deportees were no longer in U.S. custody, the court could not intervene in what it described as diplomatic matters.
The Department of Homeland Security, while denying that straitjackets were used, failed to address the central legal concerns raised in court.
The deal has also sparked backlash in Ghana. Opposition lawmakers described the arrangement as illegal, insisting that parliament should have been consulted before such an agreement was signed.
They warned that the deal risks portraying Ghana as complicit in what they called “harsh and discriminatory” U.S. immigration policies.
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