An international coalition of human rights lawyers has filed a landmark lawsuit against Ghana at West Africa's top regional court, accusing the country of unlawfully returning US deportees to the very countries they had fled. The case, filed at the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) — based in Abuja, Nigeria — is the first ever brought under a 1979 regional treaty that guarantees free movement across West Africa.
The lawsuit, brought by the Global Strategic Litigation Council and allied advocates, represents 27 of the at least 60 people the United States has deported to Ghana since September 2025 under a bilateral agreement with the Trump administration. Under the deal, Ghana agreed to receive deportees who are not Ghanaian citizens, hold them, and arrange their onward removal to their home countries — despite the majority having received formal orders of protection from US judges barring their deportation to those same countries. Immigration lawyers describe the arrangement as a legal workaround used by the Trump administration to circumvent court orders protecting asylum-seekers from forced return.
The experiences described by the 27 plaintiffs are stark. Several said they were shackled during their flight from the United States to Ghana, then held under armed guard in military camps, hotels, and airport holding cells in poor conditions. Many were flown to their home countries within hours or days of arriving, even after informing Ghanaian authorities of their US legal protections. Some were reportedly sent onward to neighbouring Togo without identity documents. Medical evaluations cited in the lawsuit found signs of post-traumatic stress disorder and severe depression in several of the individuals. The coalition accuses Ghana of violating non-refoulement — the cornerstone international legal principle that forbids states from sending people to places where they face persecution or torture.
Ghana is one of at least nine African nations to have signed such third-country deportation agreements with Washington, deals that advocates say are often kept secret. In total, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to nearly two dozen countries that are not their own as part of a sweeping crackdown on immigration. Earlier this month, a separate legal case was filed against Equatorial Guinea — a small Central African state — before Africa's leading human rights body over a similar arrangement.
The lawsuit asks the ECOWAS court to halt further transfers, compel Ghana to make the terms of its agreement with the US public, award damages to those affected, and prohibit Ghana from entering comparable deals in the future. Ghana's government had not responded to requests for comment at the time of filing. The case is being closely watched across the region as a potential test of whether such third-country removal agreements can withstand scrutiny under regional and international law.