By Robbie Corey-Boulet and Emmanuel Bruce
DAKAR/ACCRA, Jan 16 (Reuters) - After U.S. immigration agents detained Rabbiatu Kuyateh in July, she applied for protection from being deported to her native Sierra Leone, saying she feared being tortured because of her father's ties to the political opposition.
An immigration judge granted her request. But on November 5, she was deported to Ghana, another West African country. There, she said, she was detained at a hotel for six days before being forcibly
returned to her home country.
Video posted on social media at the time, verified by Kuyateh's family, shows men in green and black uniforms dragging her across the hotel floor to a waiting van. "I'm not going!" she screams.
The video made headlines, putting Ghana in the middle of a heated debate over U.S. President Donald Trump's use of so-called third-country removals to hasten the departure of unauthorised immigrants who cannot easily be sent to their home countries - part of a vast crackdown that aims to deport millions.
Kuyateh, 58, was one of more than 30 third-country nationals deported by the United States to Ghana last year, according to lawyers in both countries who filed lawsuits on their behalf.
Of those, at least 22 were sent by Ghana to their home countries despite having obtained court-ordered protection in the U.S. meant to prevent this from happening, according to a Reuters tally based on interviews with six lawyers, legal filings in both countries and complaints filed with the U.N. human rights office in Geneva.
The lawyers said Ghana's repatriations appeared systematic and that none of their clients had opportunities to raise legal objections before being sent home.
Reuters also found that Equatorial Guinea, an oil-rich Central African country, sent home at least three U.S. deportees who had protection against this in the United States, according to interviews with one of the migrants and two lawyers. These repatriations have not previously been reported.
Migrant advocates and human rights groups say the Trump administration uses third-country removals to get around U.S. and international laws that prohibit returning people to countries where they face persecution or torture, a practice known as “refoulement”.
"If Ghana and Equatorial Guinea do not afford a meaningful opportunity to challenge repatriation, they are not safe third countries, and the United States should not be deporting individuals there," said Elora Mukherjee, who directs the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School in New York. "Third countries cannot be used to circumvent the prohibition on refoulement."
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said all those sent to Ghana and Equatorial Guinea were "illegal aliens" who received due process and had final removal orders.
"We are applying the law as written. If a judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them," she said in a statement to Reuters.
McLaughlin did not address questions about the subsequent repatriations, saying, "Once an illegal alien is in another country's custody, we refer you to them for questions."
Neither did the U.S. State Department, which said the administration was "unwavering in our commitment to end illegal and mass immigration and bolster America’s border security".
Ghana's foreign ministry, interior ministry and immigration service did not respond to questions about the handling of U.S. deportees. Neither did the governments of Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea.
Ghana's interior ministry announced on November 12 that it was opening an investigation into Kuyateh's treatment by officials from the national immigration service. The results of that investigation have not been made public.
'MY WHOLE FAMILY IS THERE'
Reuters journalists met with Kuyateh after she fled Sierra Leone in November for another West African country, which she asked not be identified, citing safety reasons.
She said she was struggling to cope with her new circumstances, including being forced to spend holidays away from her adult son and aging parents, all U.S. citizens.
"I consider America as my second home," she said. "My whole family is there."
Kuyateh had been living in Maryland for nearly 30 years when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained her at a routine check-in.
She said she moved to the U.S. to escape a 1991-2002 civil war. But her asylum application was denied when she missed a hearing, and a removal order was issued for overstaying a visa, according to her lawyer, Hannah Bridges.
In her application for protection against being sent to Sierra Leone, Kuyateh said government forces there detained and raped her during the war. More recently, her brother was detained and tortured during a 2014 visit due to their father's political activities, she stated in the document, seen by Reuters.
The news agency could not independently verify her account. The judge in the case granted her a form of relief known as "withholding of removal", which bars U.S. immigration authorities from sending a person to a country where they more likely than not face serious harm.
Bridges disputed that Kuyateh received due process before she was deported to Ghana instead, saying ICE did not inform her client where she was being sent until she was boarding a flight to Accra.
ICE did not respond to requests for comment.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that the administration can send migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they might face, while a legal challenge proceeds before a lower court in Boston.
At least six African nations have agreed to take in third-country deportees. Few details have been released about the arrangements, though the U.S. has in some cases been willing to make large payments to the countries.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, raised concerns in November about a $7.5 million payment to Equatorial Guinea, which she said in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio has one of the most corrupt governments in the world.
Ghana's government has said it will only take West Africans who do not have criminal records.
"As and when they come, they are processed and sent to their countries of origin," presidential spokesperson Felix Kwakye Ofosu said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa told reporters in September that Ghana would not receive financial compensation, saying its decision to receive migrants was grounded in humanitarian principles.
However, he later told a local television station that American officials had raised the possibility of concessions on visas and tariffs in exchange for help with "immigration challenges".
The foreign ministry announced in September that the U.S. would be easing visa restrictions on its citizens imposed in July. On December 1, Ablakwa posted on X that Washington had lifted a 15% tariff on cocoa and other agricultural products.
Reuters could not establish if the changes were related to Ghana's immigration cooperation.
The State Department said it had "no comment on the details of our diplomatic communications with other governments".
FEARS OF PERSECUTION AND TORTURE
Meredyth Yoon, litigation director at the Atlanta branch of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, and Oliver Barker-Vormawor, a Ghanaian lawyer, told Reuters they had confirmed two deportation flights to Ghana. One left the U.S. on September 5 carrying 14 third-country nationals, and another left on November 5 carrying 19, they said, adding they were seeking information about three other flights.
Those subsequently repatriated include citizens of Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo, their lawyers said.
At least 10 were granted U.S. protection because their political views put them at risk in their home countries, they said. Three others who identify as gay or bisexual were deemed at risk because they come from countries that criminalise same-sex relations, while four told U.S. judges they feared being subjected to female genital mutilation.
Two women from Togo were driven over the border on motorbikes and dropped off in Togolese territory, circumventing formal crossings, three of the lawyers said. Ghana also sent migrants to Togo from countries including Nigeria and Liberia, according to the lawyers, who filed a lawsuit in Accra challenging the constitutionality of the government's agreement with the U.S.
Reuters could not independently verify the lawyers' account. The governments involved did not respond to requests for comment.
A Washington-based federal judge, Tanya Chutkan, criticised the arrangement with Ghana, saying at a hearing in September that it appeared the Trump administration crafted the deal as a way "to make an end run" around legal requirements that it refrain from sending migrants into danger in their home countries. However, Chutkan said she lacked jurisdiction to take up a lawsuit filed on behalf of five deportees who feared they could be repatriated.
In a declaration to the court, the State Department said it had "received diplomatic assurances" from Ghana that the plaintiffs would not be sent to countries where they feared persecution or torture.
The State Department did not respond to a question from Reuters about whether steps have been taken to ensure Ghana and Equatorial Guinea do not send more deportees to countries where they are at risk.
McLaughlin, from DHS, said many of those sent to Ghana were "heinous criminals with rap sheets that included injury to a child, robbery, aggravated assault and fraud."
Yoon, who has represented six of them, said "a few" had convictions, but "most had no criminal record whatsoever."
Diadie Camara told Reuters he was detained at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2024 after escaping hereditary slavery in Mauritania, a common practice in his North African homeland. His asylum application was rejected in March, but a U.S. immigration judge granted him protection from being sent to Mauritania, according to a copy of the decision seen by Reuters.
On November 24, the U.S. flew Camara, 27, and eight other migrants from countries including Angola, Eritrea, Georgia and Ghana to Equatorial Guinea, according to two lawyers and a human rights activist who spoke with some of them.
The group was detained at a Malabo hotel while local authorities arranged their repatriation, according to Camara and another migrant interviewed by Reuters who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Both asked if they could seek asylum in Equatorial Guinea but said government officials told them this was not possible.
On December 25, Camara and another Mauritanian national were flown home via Morocco, he said.
"I am now in hiding, and I don't know what to do," Camara said by phone, adding he was terrified he might be found by the family that enslaved him and punished for his escape.
The governments of Equatorial Guinea and Mauritania did not respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Robbie Corey-Boulet in Dakar and Emmanuel Bruce in Accra; Additional reporting by Nellie Peyton, Kristina Cooke and Ted Hesson; Writing by Robbie Corey-Boulet; Editing by Alexandra Zavis)
