West Africans deported by the US to Ghana are now fending for themselves in Togo after being dumped in the country without documents, according to lawyers and deportees.
The latest chapter in Donald Trump’s deportation programme, their saga became public earlier this month when the Ghanaian president, John Mahama, disclosed that his country had struck a deal to accept deportees from the region.
Eight to 10 west African nationals have since been forcibly sent by Ghana to Togo, bypassing a formal border crossing, and then left on the street without passports.
“The situation is terrible,” said Benjamin, a Nigerian national, who told AFP over the weekend he was staying in a hotel room with three other deportees and only one bed, living on money sent from their families in the US.
Benjamin – who is using a pseudonym to protect his identity, as he fears persecution from the Nigerian government – said an immigration judge had ruled in June that he couldn’t be deported to Nigeria, citing risks to his life because of his past involvement in politics. He had expected to be released to his wife and children, who are US citizens.
He said he was beaten by immigration and customs enforcement (Ice) agents when he said he would not board a US military plane headed to an unspecified location – which turned out to be Ghana.
Ice did not respond to a request for comment.
Up to 28 people have arrived in the west African nation from the US so far in the deportation programme.
Accra disclosed an initial batch of 14, and Meredyth Yoon, a US-based lawyer, said a second plane that could carry the same amount had since landed, though it was unclear how many people were on it.
The initial 14 deportees had won protections in US immigration courts preventing their removal to their home countries for fear of persecution, their lawyers said.
But Washington was sending them to Ghana as a loophole, Yoon told AFP – with Accra making it clear people would be forwarded on to their home countries.
One deportee, a bisexual man from the Gambia, was immediately sent home by Ghanaian authorities and is living in hiding because same-sex relations are criminalised in the socially conservative country, according to court filings.
Two Togolese nationals were deported to the Togo border with Benjamin. They were crying and repeating “it’s over, it’s over”, he said, adding that they had since gone into hiding.
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Benjamin and another deportee, Emmanuel – also a pseudonym – said they had spent more than two weeks under military guard in Ghana’s Dema camp, a detention facility in Bundase, 70km (43 miles) outside Accra, with nine other deportees who suffered from exposure to heat, mosquitoes and unsanitary water.
The Ghanaian military eventually told them they were taking them to a hotel. Instead, they were driven to the Aflao border crossing on the outskirts of the Togolese capital, Lomé. With the cooperation of Togolese border officials, they were taken “through the back door” of the facility and left on the other side.
“We are in hiding right now because we have no type of documents, ID, whatsoever,” said Emmanuel, a Liberian national who arrived in the US in the 1990s during the first Liberian civil war and was granted asylum.
Emmanuel and Benjamin had been green card holders, and are married to US citizens. Both were sent to Ice detention after serving prison sentences for separate fraud charges.
Emmanuel was fighting his removal in court when he was deported, Yoon said.
The UN human rights office has called on Ghana to stop deporting those sent by the US “to Nigeria, the Gambia, Togo, Mali, Liberia or any other third country where there are substantial grounds for believing that they would be in danger of being subjected to torture”.
The US state department told AFP: “We will pursue all appropriate options to remove aliens who should not be in the United States.”
