A federal judge on Saturday accused the Trump administration of trying to do an “end-run” around legal obligations that the U.S. has to protect people fleeing persecution and torture following the deportation of a group of African migrants to Ghana, some of whom are now slated to be returned to their home countries.
U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan ordered the U.S. government to explain, by 9 p.m. EST on Saturday, what steps it was taking to prevent the deportees “from being removed to their countries of origin or other countries where they fear persecution or torture.”
Earlier this month, the U.S. deported more than a dozen non-Ghanaian nationals to Ghana, including deportees from Gambia and Nigeria, making Ghana the latest country to accept these so-called third country deportations at the request of the Trump administration. Ghana’s government confirmed the deportations.
Attorneys have alleged in a lawsuit that the deportees have been held in “squalid conditions and surrounded by armed military guards in an open-air detention facility” in Ghana.
Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, told Chutkan during a hearing Saturday that four of the deportees have been told that Ghana will return them to their native nations as early as Monday, despite the fact that they have orders from U.S. immigration judges that bar their deportation to their home countries due to concerns they could be persecuted or tortured there. One man from Gambia, who attorneys say is bisexual, has already been returned to Gambia, according to the lawsuit.
The deportees’ legal protections — which are rooted in the United Nations Convention Against Torture and a provision of U.S. immigration law known as withholding of removal — prohibit the U.S. from sending foreigners to countries where they would face persecution or torture. But unlike asylum, they still allow the U.S. to send them to other, third-party countries.
The Justice Department lawyer representing the U.S. government during the hearing did not dispute that Ghana plans to return the deportees to their native countries and conceded that the Ghanaian government appears to be violating diplomatic assurances that it allegedly made vowing not to send these migrants to places where they could be harmed.
But the Justice Department attorney said the U.S. could not tell Ghana what to do at this point.
Chutkan appeared frustrated by that position, suggesting it was “disingenuous.” She grilled the Justice Department attorney about whether the U.S. knew this could happen and suggested the deportations seemed to be an “end-run” to bypass the legal protections the deportees have. She suggested the U.S. can retrieve the deportees and return them to the U.S. or transfer them to another country where they would be safe. Or, she added, it could tell Ghana it is violating its agreement with the U.S.
“How’s this not a violation of your obligation?” she asked the Justice Department attorney.
But Chutkan acknowledged her “hands may be tied” since the deportees are not on American soil nor in U.S. custody. She also implied that the Supreme Court would almost certainly pause any order that required the American government to act to stop the returns.
Representatives for the Departments of State and Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests to comment on the deportations to Ghana and Chutkan’s order.
Gelernt, the ACLU attorney representing the African deportees, hailed Chutkan’s mandate.
“The Court properly recognized that the United States government, with full knowledge that these individuals are going to be sent to danger, cannot simply wash their hands of the matter,” Gelernt told CBS News.
As part of its mass deportation campaign, the Trump administration has sought to convince countries around the globe to receive deportees who are not their citizens, brokering agreements with nations including El Salvador, Kosovo, Panama and South Sudan.
