A group of 14 people has become the latest West Africans deported from the US to Ghana under an accord between the two countries, said a lawyer whose group filed a lawsuit seeking to block the arrangement.
Oliver Barker-Vormawor, who represents migrants, said the latest group of 14 West African nationals arrived on Monday to bring the overall total to 42 deportees accepted by the Ghanaian government.
His group, Democracy Hub, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Ghana's government, alleging that the agreement with Washington is unconstitutional because it wasn't approved by the Ghanaian parliament and that it may violate conventions that forbid sending people to countries where they could face persecution.
Government spokesman Felix Kwakye Ofosu said the attorney general would defend the arrangement in court but otherwise declined to comment.
Immigration crack-down
Deporting people to third countries - in many cases places they've never lived - has been a hallmark of US President Donald Trump's crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
Dozens of deportees have been sent to Africa since July after the Trump administration struck largely secretive agreements with at least five African nations to take migrants under a new third-country deportation programme.
A group of 14 deportees arrived in Ghana in September, authorities said.
The US sent a first group of five deportees to Eswatini in July, saying they had been convicted of serious crimes, including murder.
Since then, the US also has deported other migrants to South Sudan, Rwanda, and Ghana. It also has an agreement with Uganda, though no deportations there have been announced.
Six deportees are still detained in an unspecified facility in South Sudan, while Rwanda hasn’t said where it is holding seven deportees.
