Advocacy groups challenge U.S. deportations to Ghana at ECOWAS court
Rights groups asked ECOWAS judges to halt U.S. deportations routed through Ghana, saying at least 60 people were swept into a secretive transfer system.
Advocacy groups have asked the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States to intervene in a U.S.-Ghana deportation arrangement that has sent at least 60 people into Ghana since September 2025. The complaint was filed on behalf of 27 deportees and seeks at least $100,000 for each person, plus additional reparations.
The complaint alleges people who had been granted protections in the United States were removed within hours or days of arriving in Ghana, often to countries they had originally fled. Some were left stranded in third countries without a way to continue their journeys.
Beatrice Njeri, a litigator for the Global Strategic Litigation Council, said the case is meant to discourage other ECOWAS members from striking similar agreements with Washington.
The first group of 14 deportees arrived in Ghana on September 6, 2025. Ghana’s government said on September 16 that all 14 had been returned to their home countries in West Africa, but lawyers said three days later that 11 were still being held in a military camp near Accra. By October 2025, another 14 West African nationals had arrived, bringing the total then to 42 accepted by Ghana.
A Global Detention Project submission dated April 30, 2026, estimated that advocacy groups were working directly with 34 deportees and that the total number brought into Ghana could be between 70 and 100. The submission placed detainees at Dema Camp, also known as Bundase Training Camp, a hotel, and holding cells at Kotoka Airport, where they reported poor sanitation, intermittent access to phones and Wi-Fi, and illness.
Democracy Hub filed a case in Ghana’s Supreme Court in October 2025, arguing the deal was unconstitutional because parliament had not ratified it. In the United States, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said the deportation pathway appeared to be a way to route people through Ghana and on to countries where they could face persecution or torture. After the United States tightened visa limits on Ghana in July 2025, it later restored five-year multiple-entry visas.
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