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A group of 14 people have become the latest West Africans deported from the US to Ghana under an agreement between the countries, a lawyer said, whose group filed a lawsuit on Tuesday seeking to block the arrangement.
Oliver Barker-Vormavor, representing the migrants, said the latest group of 14 West African nationals arrived on Monday to bring the total of deportees approved by the Ghanian government to 42.
His group, Democracy Hub, on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the Ghanaian government alleging the agreement Washington It is unconstitutional because it was not approved by the Ghanian Parliament and may violate conventions that prohibit deporting people to countries where they may face persecution.
Government spokesman Felix Kwaki Ofosu said the attorney general would defend the arrangement in court, but declined to comment otherwise.
administration of the us president donald trump Cracking down on immigrants entering the country illegally, it said it is particularly targeting those with criminal records, including those who cannot be easily deported to their home countries.
Dozens of deportees have been sent to Africa since July after the Trump administration struck largely secret agreements with at least five African countries to take migrants under the new third country deportation program.
Rights groups have opposed the program, saying it is opaque and sends deportees to countries where they have no ties and where they are likely to be denied due process. Critics say that in some cases, migrants have been deported to third countries even though their home countries have accepted them.
Last month, the US deported an initial group of 14 West African immigrants to Ghana, where officials later said all the deportees were deported to their home countries elsewhere in West Africa, including Togo, Nigeria and Mali.
However, their lawyers told The Associated Press in September that 11 of them were still being held in a military camp on the outskirts of the capital, accraWhat he described as terrible conditions. Since then, 10 of those migrants have been deported to Togo, Barker-Vormavor said, although only two of them are Togolese.
The US sent the first group of five deported to Eswatini in July, saying they were convicted of serious crimes including murder and child rape.
The US has since deported other migrants to South Sudan, rwanda And Ghana. It also has an agreement with Uganda, although no deportations have been announced there.
Six of the deportees are still detained in an unspecified facility in South Sudan, while Rwanda has not said where it is holding seven of the deportees.