West African migrants deported from the United States to Ghana earlier this month have been transferred to neighbouring Togo by force, according to their lawyers, who are pursuing lawsuits in US, Ghanaian and regional courts alleging violations of fundamental human rights.
Of 14 people who landed in Ghana from the US on 6 September, lawyers say 11 were kept in detention. After around two weeks at a military camp near Accra, six of them were allegedly taken across the border to Togo.
“The deportees were forced by armed military guards to climb wire fences,” said Samantha Hamilton, an attorney for Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), a civil rights organisation that has filed a lawsuit in the US on behalf of the migrants.
“A woman in her late 50s was thrown on the back of a motorcycle and smuggled across the border.”
The lawyers believe that Togo was chosen for its proximity. It is two and a half hours' drive from where the deportees were held in Ghana.
Only two of the people removed between 18 and 19 September are Togolese nationals, according to their lawyers, the others hailing from Nigeria, Mali, Liberia and Gambia.
“A Malian woman who only speaks Bambara was left to fend for herself in Togo. She was sexually assaulted,” Hamilton told RFI.
A spokesperson for the Ghanaian government, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, told RFI on 23 September that "all deportees have left Ghana for their respective home countries".
Yet their lawyers say they have information that indicates four other deportees were not transferred to their countries of origin but sent by Ghanaian authorities to different countries. One of the deportees has reportedly been released to family in Ghana.
Public embarrassment
Hamilton believes it was a “calculated attempt to get rid of these people”.
The migrants were transferred after they filed lawsuits against the authorities in Ghana, suing for their release and to avoid being repatriated to countries where they could be in danger.
After an initial hearing on 17 September, a judge adjourned the case until 23 September. By then, the 11 deportees were no longer in Ghana – so the lawyers had to withdraw the application for an injunction to prevent their repatriation and the application for the government to produce them in court.
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“What the government did was try to circumvent and frustrate the court processes,” said Oliver Barker-Vormawor, a senior partner at Merton & Everett law firm in Accra and one of the lawyers representing the deportees.
“There was every attempt to keep this under wraps. The government was embarrassed by the lawsuits and this becoming public,” he claimed.
“The deportees told us that the military hierarchy and those who were holding them were in an apparent state of confusion regarding the publicity and wanted to get rid of them as fast as they could.”
Lawsuits ongoing
Barker-Vormawor told RFI that the case against the government in Ghana for breach of human rights remains ongoing.
“We're also pursuing the government for the detention of the deportees in a military facility. They were detained as civilians in a military facility for around 14 days without being brought before a court,” he said.
The matter will be taken to the court of regional body Ecowas, involving lawyers from the US, including the American Civil Liberties Union.
An action is being filed to compel Ghana's government to disclose its agreement with the US and halt its implementation until it is submitted to parliament for ratification.
Ghana's foreign affairs minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said that his government was not under any obligation to produce its memorandum of understanding with Washington.
Opposition parties, however, point to a 2017 Supreme Court ruling that states any international agreement must be ratified by parliament.
US efforts
In the US, the AAJC has also been trying to get hold of the agreement – “but the US government has been unwilling to provide that information”, said Hamilton.
“This seems like a scheme to disappear people in violation of American immigration laws as well as international law.”
Hamilton claims President Donald Trump's administration entered a deal with Ghana while knowing it has a history of unlawfully repatriating people to countries where they face torture and persecution, as documented by the US Department of State.
We want to put an end to this third country removal policy completely,” she said. “There’s a lawsuit pending in a federal court in Boston challenging this policy.”
Several US federal courts have ordered the return to the US of people who have been deported to third countries, Hamilton noted.
“These federal courts are some of the only tools we have to try hold the Trump administration to account... The Trump administration has flouted the rule of law repeatedly. I have to believe, for my own sanity, that one of these days the government will comply with court-ordered decisions, because that's all that we've got.”
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'Pan-African solidarity'
Ghana, one of five African countries to agree deportation deals with Washington, is preparing to take in more people expelled from the US.
According to Barker-Vormawor, some 14 more deportees reached Ghana on 19 September.
“We know that the government is taking extreme measures to prevent any leak of information about the detention of these persons,” he said.
Last week, foreign minister Ablakwa announced that 40 more deportees were to be transferred to Ghana from the US.
He also said that accepting them in Ghana was an act of "pan-African solidarity" designed to provide "temporary refuge" and prevent suffering.
Barker-Vormawor dismissed that justification. "Given what we have uncovered, the government’s PR about pan-African solidarity does not stand," he said.
"We think that the initiative came from the US, whereby certain actions from Ghana might be favourably looked upon by the Trump administration. We think that was the deal on the table, and that's why the government accepted it."
