The lives of many Ghanaians who have been earmarked for deportation in the USA depend on the final decision of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA).

The BIA reviews cases involving asylum, visas, and deportation orders. Ghanaians (and other foreign nationals) are deported if they overstay visas, enter illegally, commit crimes, or lose asylum claims.

Ghana’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa during a briefing in Parliament on Thursday, November 20 on immigration-related issues, explained that more than three hundred Ghanaians have been in detention in the last ten to eleven (10-11) months in the USA over immigration-related charges and one hundred and twenty (120) of the detained are currently awaiting the verdict by the BIA on what their fate will be, whether they will be allowed to continue staying or brought back home.

“So far, Mr Speaker, 388 Ghanaians have been in detention since January this year on immigration-related charges. Of this number, 120 are awaiting final decisions by the Board of Immigration Appeals”, the North Tongu Minister said.

However, he noted that some people already know their fate and are currently waiting to finalise deportation arrangements and head back home.

“Additionally, 49 have exhausted all legal processes and are awaiting final deportation arrangements”, he added.

Earlier reports suggested that 2,470 Ghanaians were on the U.S. deportation list, one of the highest figures ever recorded. By mid-2025, Ghana’s Foreign Affairs Ministry confirmed that 188 nationals had been earmarked for deportation and were already in detention facilities.

However, during yesterday’s presenation in Parliament, Mr Ablakwa indicated that per his outfit’s records, “169 Ghanaians have been deported to Ghana since January 2025. Out of this number, 90 arrived unaccompanied on commercial flights, 66 arrived on chartered, controlled flights supervised by ICE agents.

The Minister’s briefing comes on the back of the U.S. government’s intensified immigration enforcement drive under President Donald Trump in 2025, which targeted undocumented migrants.

The U.S. formally notified Ghana’s embassies in Washington and New York, requesting cooperation in issuing travel certificates for deportees. Ghana, in response, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the U.S. to accept deportees, including some West African nationals, a decision which sparked backlash, particularly from the minority, when news of possible abuse of these West African nationals who were deported to Ghana.

Critics described the program as “Return to Nowhere,” citing harsh conditions including shackling, military transport, and detention in camps like Bundase and Burma Camp.

Addressing public concerns about human rights abuses in the U.S. deportation process, the Minister highlighted that,

“We have made it clear that deportees have rights and must be deported within the confines of international law. They should not be abused, and their rights must be respected. So far, in our engagement with these deportees, there has been no evidence of rights violations”.

On the abuse of the rights of these deportees, a group of 11 West African nationals deported from the U.S. to Ghana sued the Government of Ghana in September 2025, alleging unlawful detention and abuse of rights. Their lawyer was Oliver Barker-Vormawor, a Ghanaian human rights activist and lawyer. The case was filed at the Labour Division and Human Rights Division of the High Court in Accra, but was later removed to be pursued in the US, because the deportees’ claims were tied to U.S. immigration decisions.

The reasoning was that Ghana’s courts could not directly overturn or enforce U.S. immigration rulings; only U.S. federal courts could.

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.

Some critics alleged that the government’s acceptance was in exchange for some monetary, logistics or diplomatic benefits, particularly after the government was exempted from the new visa policy directive issued by the Trump administration.

Ablakwa, however, denied these claims, stating that,

“The government of Ghana has not requested any monetary support, logistical support, or any material support for this intervention. The understanding is purely on humanitarian grounds. We are Pan-Africanists. These are fellow West Africans who are in distress, being detained, being treated shabbily, without dignity, and we cannot look on as Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana,” he told Parliament.

Meanwhile, in mid-September, 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.

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.

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.

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 conditions 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.