Ghana

As of early December, there have been four confirmed flights to Ghana that have carried at least a combined 60 third country nationals, many of whom had been granted withholding of removal or protection under the Convention Against Torture by U.S. immigration judges.

The first flight to Ghana on September 5th included ten men and four women from Nigeria, Gambia, Togo, Mali and Liberia, eight of whom had been granted withholding of removal or protection under the Convention Against Torture—prohibiting their return to their home countries. A flight on October 13 carried seventeen third country nationals, including a nurse who had been living in Maryland with her family since she fled war in Sierra Leone thirty years ago and had been granted protection under the Convention Against Torture. A flight that arrived in Ghana on November 7 transferred 19 West African nationals, some of whom had been granted withholding of removal. 

Ghana has deported the transferred individuals to their home countries or other third countries even though the Ghanaian foreign minister initially promised to provide the transferred West Africans access to “safe haven.” Prior to their deportation, Ghana detained some in a military camp under harsh conditions, with limited ability to communicate with family members and their attorneys. In the military camp, one woman sent to Ghana on the November flight was so terrified of being returned to her home country—where she believed she would be killed—that she attempted suicide and was hospitalized before ultimately being deported to her home country. The Ghanaian authorities refused to reveal the whereabouts of 45 additional people transferred by the United States after the first flight to Ghana, amounting to enforced disappearances. Individuals on the October flight were reportedly held under armed guard at a hotel.

Among those forcibly deported to their home countries were people granted protection from return to their home countries by U.S. immigration judges—amounting to chain refoulement. The nurse from Sierra Leone was deported by Ghana to Sierra Leone even though a U.S. judge found she would likely be tortured if deported to Sierra Leone. In November, videos surfaced of her being dragged in Ghana, reportedly after she resisted deportation to her home country. One Gambian man, who had been granted protection under the Convention Against Torture because of his sexuality and was transferred by the United States to Ghana on the first flight, was returned to Gambia after being held for five days in Ghana’s airport without access to a phone, shower, or clean clothes. The return to Gambia amounts to chain refoulement, while the transfer to Ghana may further constitute direct refoulement, as consensual same-sex conduct is criminalized and violence against LGBT people remains widespread in Ghana. The Ghanaian government also deported to Togo two Togolese women who fled female genital mutilation and were granted withholding of removal by U.S. immigration judges, along with Nigerian and Liberian nationals, reportedly to make detention space available for another group arriving from the United States. Reports suggest that Ghana may also have repatriated two Nigerians to Nigeria within days of arrival. Eight of the people on the October flight were deported by Ghana the same day they arrived. 

U.S. officials carried out the forced transfers in blatant disregard of the risk of chain refoulement. According to court filings, the United States pulled the ten individuals on the September 5th  flight from a U.S. detention center in the middle of the night and forced them onto a military cargo plane without telling them where they were going or allowing them access to their attorneys. Four men who resisted boarding the plane were placed in straightjackets. At least one person was not given their identification documents. Once the plane was en route to Ghana, U.S. agents informed them that they would be taken first to Ghana, and then to their home countries. A Nigerian man who had been granted withholding of removal reported that on the plane: “I told the officers repeatedly that I was afraid for my life. He told me that he didn’t care, and that when we got to Ghana we would then go to our respective countries of origin.”

The forced transfers by the United States to Ghana have been carried out under an informal arrangement between the two countries. Although no public agreement exists, the two governments reportedly exchanged diplomatic notes and a memorandum of understanding. According to reporting, Ghana agreed to receive West African nationals, who could enter visa-free for 90 days under the Economic Community of West African States protocol. It claimed that it did not receive any financial compensation for receiving third country nationals. U.S. officials said they had received diplomatic assurances that Ghana would not send transferred individuals to countries where they might face torture but have refused to make these assurances public. 

The forced transfers to Ghana are part of DHS’s broader practice of deporting individuals with final orders of removal, including those granted withholding of removal or CAT protection. In these cases, DHS sends people to third countries that were never identified as potential destinations during their immigration proceedings. These removals take place without prior notice or an opportunity for the individuals to present a fear claim specific to the third country. This practice denies people due process and creates the risk that they will be sent to persecution and torture. It violates the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, Constitutional due process protections, and international treaty obligations codified in U.S. law including the prohibition on refoulement. This practice was challenged before a U.S. federal district court in Massachusetts in D.V.D. v. DHS, leading the court to enjoin third country removals without notice or opportunity to raise a fear claim, but the Supreme Court stayed the injunction in June 2025 pending a decision on the merits. With the stay in place, DHS has deported people to Ghana without notice or an opportunity to claim fear. 

In response to a legal challenge in D.A. v. Noem, brought in U.S. federal court in the District of Columbia with respect to individuals transferred to Ghana on the September 5 flight, a district court judge found that she lacked jurisdiction to order the Ghanaian government to take action but sharply condemned the forced transfers as part of a pattern by the Trump administration that departed from “three decades” of prior practice and was “designed to evade” the U.S. government’s legal obligations: 

“In recent months…authorities have rounded up—often at night and with little or no notice—men, women, and children being held in detention facilities, hastily put them on planes and transferred them to other countries, where they have no connections, do not speak the language, and are unable to contact family or counsel…Defendants’ actions in this case appear to be taken in disregard of or despite its obligations to provide individuals present in the United States with due process and to treat even those who are subject to removal humanely. These actions also appear to be part of a pattern and widespread effort to evade the government’s legal obligations by doing indirectly what it cannot do directly.” 

The D.C. district court judge further found that the Trump administration transported people to Ghana “with no notice or opportunity to challenge that removal, under what appears to be a hasty and unwritten agreement with Ghana, which has indicated its intention to return Plaintiffs to their home countries where Defendants agree they will almost certainly be persecuted.” 

Various groups have also challenged the transfers to Ghana in international fora and in Ghanaian court. Lawyers in Ghana brought a suit challenging detention conditions in the military camp and sought to prevent deportations. Civil society pushed the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to send a complaint to Ghana’s government urging a halt to removals of individuals to places “where there are substantial grounds for believing that they would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” The Ghanaian organization Democracy Hub has filed a lawsuit in Ghana’s Supreme Court claiming accepting transfers violates the Ghanaian Constitution, Ghana’s non-refoulement obligations under international law, and the letter and spirit of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) protocol. In October 2025, Democracy Hub also filed an information request asking that the Ghanaian government disclose details of the agreement with the United States, the number and countries of origin of non-Ghanaian nationals transferred by the United States to Ghana, and treatment of them in Ghana, including their removal to other countries. 

Arbitrary detention has consistently been a human rights concern in Ghana as noted in U.S. State Department reports year after year. The forced removals by Ghana are reminiscent of Ghana’s treatment of Burkinabe people in 2023, when it forcibly deported around 1,200 people, mostly women and children, without allowing them to claim asylum.  

Prior to the forced transfers, in July, the United States imposed visa restrictions on Ghanaians seeking non-immigrant visas, affecting nearly 10,000 Ghanaian students in the United States. On August 1, the Trump administration added 15 percent tariffs on Ghanaian exports. But on September 5, the same day as the transfers, President Trump signed an executive order allowing Ghana a possible exemption from new tariffs if it signed trade and security agreements. One week later, after Ghana’s foreign minister announced the country would accept another 40 transferees, the United States lifted visa restrictions previously imposed on Ghana, allowing Ghanaian citizens to apply for five-year multiple-entry visas and other enhanced consular privileges. Exemptions on the tariffs went into effect on November 13. In early December 2025, Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ghana Rolf Olson confirmed that Ghanaian nationals would be exempt from U.S. immigration policy changes scrutinizing green card holders and pausing the issuance of visas.