Ghana’s agreement with the United States to accept some West African deportees is not for financial or material benefit, Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has clarified.

Speaking at the Government Accountability Series at the Jubilee House on Monday, September 15, he emphasised that the government’s decision to support the deal was grounded purely on humanitarian grounds and principle.

“It is important to state that Ghana has not received any money, compensation or any material benefit in relation to this understanding. Our decision is grounded purely on humanitarian grounds and principle,” he said.The clarification is a response to claims that the government has ulterior motives in its agreement with the United States won the deportee arrangement.

Among the critics are the Minority in Parliament, the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), which has questioned the legality of the deal, citing Article 75 of Ghana’s Constitution.

The article dictates that international agreements, as such, should be approved by Parliament. Opposition MPs argue that Mahama’s deal with the U.S. was never ratified and is therefore unlawful.

They cite previous Supreme Court rulings, like the one involving the Gitmo 2 detainees, as precedent for why executive-only deals are unconstitutional.“The deal should have been brought to Parliament. It’s the same President Mahama who entered into a deal for the relocation of the Gitmo 2 to Ghana. What’s in it for our beloved country, Ghana?,” wrote Charles Owiredu, NPP MP for Abirem.

The opposition slammed Mahama for hiding behind the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) protocol on free movement, calling it a misleading move. Those protocols apply to voluntary travel, not forced deportations orchestrated by non-member states like the U.S.

“Accepting forced deportations orchestrated by non-ECOWAS states contradicts the spirit of regional integration protocols designed for voluntary movement,” stated the Minority Caucus on the Foreign Affairs Committee.

President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, revealed during a media encounter held on Wednesday, September 10, at 8:00 PM at the Jubilee House, that the first West African nationals have arrived in Ghana following their deportation from the USA.

The batch consisted of 14 individuals, mostly Nigerians, along with one Gambian national.

“We were approached by the US to accept third-country nationals who were being removed, and we agreed that West African nationals could be accommodated, since all our fellow West Africans do not require a visa to enter Ghana. So, if they travel from the US to Accra, entry is not an issue. Bringing our West African colleagues back is therefore acceptable,” President Mahama explained.

While President Mahama didn’t explicitly detail the deal of being a purported transit hub for the West African national sent from the US, the judge, until Trump’s government submits its report, suspects complicity on the part of the Ghanaian government in the full deportation process.

Meanwhile, A federal judge, Tanya Chutkan, has questioned the Trump-led administration over its decision to deport West African nationals to Ghana instead of sending them straight to their home countries, describing the move as an apparent attempt to circumvent U.S. immigration laws.

These laws say the U.S. government cannot deport or return a person to a country where they are likely to be tortured or persecuted.

Her remarks come after the President of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, revealed during a media encounter held on Wednesday, September 10, at 8:00 PM at the Jubilee House, that the first West African nationals have arrived in Ghana following their deportation from the USA.

Judge Tanya Chutkan granted an emergency hearing after lawyers of the deportees contended that their clients, expected to be returned to their home countries, Nigeria and Gambia, feared they would be tortured or persecuted.

For clarity, Chutkan instructed Donald Trump’s administration to submit a report by 9 p.m. on Saturday, detailing what efforts they are taking to prevent Ghana from sending the deportees back to their home countries.

She explained that concerns about their safety in their home countries were not speculations or claims but real enough “that the United States government agrees they shouldn’t be sent back to their home country.”

According to her, the arrangement appeared to have been designed by U.S. officials “to make an end run” around legal requirements that bar the government from sending migrants back to situations of danger.

The controversial deportations form part of President Donald Trump’s strategy of relocating migrants to “third countries” to expedite removals and pressure undocumented immigrants to leave the U.S.

The deportation of the West African Nationals and their conditionsIt emerged after a lawsuit filed on Friday, September 12, by the counsel of the migrants, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Asian Americans Advancing Justice that five of the nationals deported from the US to Ghana had U.S. legal protections preventing deportation to their home countries over fear of danger or persecution. One of them, a bisexual man, has already been sent to Gambia and is reportedly in hiding.

The others were held in an open-air facility managed by the Ghanaian military, described as having squalid conditions.

The said migrants, according to claims, were taken from a Louisiana detention facility, shackled, and flown on a U.S. military aircraft without being told their destination. The complaint further alleges that some were restrained in straitjackets for 16 hours.

Trump’s government responds to the Judge’s request for clarity in the deportation case

The U.S. Department of Justice, in response to the judge’s request, stated that it no longer had custody of the migrants, challenging the court’s authority to interfere in diplomacy, citing a Supreme Court ruling that approves their deportations to third countries.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, however, rejected claims that straitjackets were used during the flight, refusing to comment on the allegations of circumventing immigration law.

About the Gitmo 2 deal

In January 2016, President Mahama welcomed two Yemeni nationals, namely, Mahmud Umar Muhammad Bin Atef and Khalid Muhammed Salih Al-Dhuby, who had been detained at Guantanamo Bay (the U.S. military prison located in Cuba) for about a decade and a half, approximately.

They were held there after being linked to Al-Qaeda activities, and their transfer to Ghana in January 2016 was part of a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and the Mahama-led administration.

The Mahama government then explained that the move was merely a humanitarian gesture, and the two were to stay in Ghana for two years. This humanitarian deal, originally supposed to be approved by Parliament as the constitution demands, wasn’t hence, in June 2017, Ghana’s Supreme Court ruled that the Gitmo 2 deal was unconstitutional.

The court ordered the government to submit the agreement to Parliament within three months or return the detainees to the U.S.