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A coalition of lawyers and human rights groups has taken Ghana to West Africa’s highest court, accusing the country of unlawfully cooperating with the United States to deport migrants to places where they face torture or persecution.
The case, filed on Monday at the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice in Abuja, represents 27 of at least 60 people deported to Ghana since September under President Donald Trump’s expanded “third-country” deportation programme. The court is the judicial arm of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the regional bloc of 12 member states.
The lawsuit was filed by Ghanaian law firm Merton & Everett LLP, working with Cornell Law School’s Transnational Disputes Clinic in the United States and the Global Strategic Litigation Council, a coalition of NGOs. “No person should be returned to a place where they face persecution, torture or serious threats to their dignity and safety,” said Oliver Barker-Vormawor, the firm’s senior partner.
Trump’s second-term immigration crackdown has expanded the categories of people who can be deported, including some who had already secured legal protections in the United States. When US courts ruled that certain migrants would likely face torture or persecution if sent directly to their home countries, Washington instead transferred them to third countries such as Ghana. Ghanaian authorities then sent many of them onward, either back to their home countries or, according to AFP, into neighbouring Togo without documents.
The lawsuit argues that Ghana violated both domestic and regional law by facilitating those onward removals. According to the legal team, the deportees in the case had sought asylum or other legal protections in the United States, and most had been granted them. Under the Trump administration’s interpretation of US law, those protections prevent direct deportation to a person’s home country but do not prohibit transfers to a third country.
None of the 27 deportees named in the case remains in Ghana. The coalition said many are now in hiding in their home countries or have fled elsewhere, where they remain stranded in legal uncertainty.
The case also raises broader diplomatic questions. According to the lawsuit, Ghanaian officials linked the agreement with Washington to the lifting of US visa restrictions on Ghana. If proven, that would suggest migration cooperation formed part of a wider deal between the two governments. Ghana has confirmed only that the arrangement applies to West African nationals and has released no further details.
Ghana is not the only country facing legal scrutiny. Earlier this month, a separate complaint was filed with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights seeking to stop similar US deportations to Equatorial Guinea, another country used as a transit point for displaced Africans. Eswatini has also faced criticism for accepting deportees under similar arrangements.
Rights groups argue these cases reveal a broader system of what they describe as “chain refoulement”, in which repeated transfers ultimately send people back to the very dangers they fled, undermining international protections against forced return.
By: Andrews Kwesi Yeboah