One of the five plaintiffs, described as a bisexual man from the nearby Western African country of The Gambia, was recently deported to his home country—a country where same-sex relationships can lead to criminal charges.
Attorneys for five migrants deported to Ghana, a small country in West Africa, claim that the Trump administration blatantly ignored court-ordered legal protections for their clients, flying them out of the country with unusual speed and a total lack of transparency.
According to The New York Times, lawyers for the five migrants say that their clients’ situation bears obvious resemblance to that of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, entered the United States without legal status while still a child. He lived as an undocumented immigrant between 2011 and 2019, after which a federal immigration judge granted him a withholding of removal, allowing him to legally live and work in the United States. Despite his protected status, Abrego Garcia was detained in 2025 and deported to a prison in El Salvador; the Trump administration acknowledged that he had been removed in error, yet refused to correct its mistake, defying a court order in the process.
Now, attorneys for the five migrants say that the Trump administration has again flouted the law, using controversial agreements with countries like Ghana and El Salvador to ignore asylum-related concerns of mistreatment and persecution in detainees’ home countries.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the organization representing the plaintiffs, accuses the Trump administration of using these so-called “third country” arrangements to side-step legal protections for asylum-seekers. First, the administration explicitly directs that migrants be deported to countries like Ghana—and then, if and when it is challenged, claims that it has no authority to prevent a foreign government from sending detainees back to their countries of origin.
“Defendants have enlisted the government of Ghana to do their dirty work,” the lawsuit alleges. “Despite the minimal, pass-through involvement of the Ghanaian government, defendants’ objective is clear: Deport individuals who have been granted fear-based relief from being sent to their countries of origin to those countries anyway, in contravention to the rulings of U.S. immigration judges and U.S. immigration law.”
In court filings, attorneys for the five migrants claim that their clients, now in Ghana, are forced to endure “abysmal” living conditions in Dema Camp, a detention center with no listed address.
One of the five plaintiffs, described as a bisexual man from the nearby Western African country of The Gambia, was recently deported to his home country—a country where same-sex relationships can lead to criminal charges. The remaining four migrants do not know where, exactly, they are being held in Ghana, but are all “in immediate danger of being sent on, within hours, to their countries.”
Sources
Lawsuit Accuses Trump Officials of More Wrongful Deportations
Lawsuit says US held West African migrants in straitjackets for 16 hours on flight to Ghana
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