Accra (AFP) – A civil society group has filed a lawsuit seeking to declare illegal the deportation deal between Ghana and the US government, and the way the West African deportees are being treated, court documents show. Ghanaian leader John Mahama disclosed last month that his country had struck a deal with the United States to accept deportees from West Africa as part of US President Donald Trump’s vast, opaque deportation programme.
At least 42 people have arrived in the West African nation since early September, with the most recent flight arriving Monday, according to a Tuesday statement from civil society platform Democracy Hub, which filed the suit. Neither Washington nor Accra provided their own count. Deportees who have spoken to AFP — including US permanent residents who had previously won protections from deportation — said that they were detained in a Ghanaian military camp in harsh conditions before being dumped in neighbouring Togo without documents. Another, a bisexual Gambian man, was sent by Ghana to his home country, which criminalises same-sex relations, according to US court filings.
Democracy Hub lodged the suit in the Supreme Court against the Ghana government on Monday, according to court papers seen by AFP on Tuesday. It argued that Mahama “acted unconstitutionally” by implementing the agreement with the US government with respect to the reception, detention, and onward transfer of involuntarily repatriated West African nationals into Ghana without a parliamentary resolution or ratification of the deal.
The lawsuit is also asking the court to declare the detention of civilian deportees in military custody as unlawful. Democracy Hub’s suit argues that by facilitating the “onward deportation” of people in need of international protection and holding them in “deplorable, inhumane and degrading conditions,” Ghana is violating the global convention against torture. It seeks a declaration that the reception and detention in Ghana of the migrants be found to be “unlawful and unconstitutional, where such persons have not been charged with any offence, are held for prolonged periods without being presented before a court of competent jurisdiction, and are denied access to legal counsel.”
The court is expected to hear arguments about whether to suspend the agreement on October 22. Ghana’s foreign minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa last week admitted that his country was taking in expelled individuals in exchange for the lifting of US visa restrictions. “They said okay you have come to us with what you want. You want us to reverse the visa restrictions, you want (a US trade deal) extended, you want us to relook at the 15-percent tariff. We are also now dealing with immigration challenges… So we want you to help us to deal with this issue,” he said on TV3 Ghana.
© 2024 AFP
