A Ghanaian mother detained for over a week in a bare airport holding room boarded a flight home to Ghana on Friday with her disabled 4-year-old son — ending an ordeal that drew a federal court’s rebuke of immigration authorities and reignited debate over the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive border enforcement.
Anabella Gyasi, 38, had arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport on May 19 carrying a valid tourist visa, intending to take her son to a scheduled medical appointment in the United States. The boy had been referred to Akron Children’s Hospital in Ohio for evaluation for possible surgery to address severe physical abnormalities affecting the fingers on both hands. It would not be their first attempt: the family had previously travelled to the US in 2024 for medical care, but returned to Ghana after being told the boy was still too young for the procedure.
Their second trip never got past the airport. After clearing customs, Gyasi disclosed to officers her fear of returning to Ghana, citing persecution she and her son had faced — and both were immediately taken into custody by US Customs and Border Protection. From that moment, the two were locked inside a room containing a single bed, a toilet, a sink and no windows, kept confined for 24 hours a day.
The conditions, their lawyers argued, were dangerous. Gyasi was hospitalised twice during the detention for pregnancy complications, including vaginal bleeding and lightheadedness, but was returned both times to the same holding room at Dulles. She was allegedly prevented from purchasing food for her son, and grew so alarmed by the hunger affecting both him and her unborn child that she told officers she would rather be deported than denied food — and signed a deportation order. The ACLU, which took up her case, stressed that the signing was an act of desperation, not a genuine withdrawal of her asylum claim.
The government pushed back. The Department of Homeland Security called the allegations about conditions and food access “false,” insisting that everyone in CBP custody has access to appropriate care, including medical evaluation, medication and food. Authorities also argued that Gyasi’s tourist visa had been invalidated because she had admitted under oath that her intent was not to leave the United States and return to Ghana.
But a federal judge was unmoved by Washington’s defence. At an emergency hearing Friday morning in Alexandria, Virginia, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema — a Clinton appointee — told government lawyers the situation was untenable. “She cannot spend tonight at Dulles,” Brinkema said flatly. “One way or another, we’re going to get her out.” Hours later, she formalised that position in a written ruling, stating that “the welfare of the petitioners and the interests of justice are best served by allowing petitioners to return home immediately.”
The ACLU, which had filed a habeas petition earlier in the week, welcomed the ruling while framing it as a moral verdict on the conditions of detention. “We were very pleased that the judge recognized one fundamental principle, which is that human beings should not be detained under the conditions our client was being detained at Dulles Airport in a windowless room without access to appropriate food or medical care,” said Mary Bauer, executive director of the ACLU of Virginia.
The ACLU’s legal director, Eden Heilman, noted a painful irony at the heart of the case: had Gyasi simply proceeded on her tourist visa and filed for asylum later while already in Ohio, she would likely never have been detained at all. “If she had just gone ahead with her visa, and then, while she was in Ohio, for example, filled out her asylum stuff online, she wouldn’t be going through what she is currently going through,” Heilman said.
The ACLU’s petition alleged that CBP had recently instituted a policy requiring the physical custody of all asylum-seeking individuals entering the country at ports of entry, and accused the agency of converting non-public commercial rooms within airports into what the group described as prison cells. Gyasi’s case is the latest to land before a federal judiciary straining to keep pace with the administration’s drive to maximise deportations and tighten vetting of visitors arriving on nonimmigrant visas.
By: Andrews Kwesi Yeboah