When U.S. immigration agents detained Rabbiatu Kuyateh in Maryland last July, the 58-year-old Sierra Leonean believed the law would protect her. An immigration judge agreed, granting her protection from deportation after she said she feared torture because of her father’s ties to the political opposition. But months later, Kuyateh found herself dragged across a hotel floor in Accra, Ghana, pleading not to be taken as uniformed men forced her into a van. Days later, she was back in Sierra Leone. The account, documented by Reuters through interviews, court records and verified video footage, has become a stark symbol of the expanding and controversial U.S. practice of third-country removals.
Video circulated on social media and reviewed by Reuters shows Kuyateh screaming as men in green and black uniforms hauled her through a hotel where she said she had been detained for six days. The footage thrust Ghana into the center of a heated debate over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which aims to deport millions of unauthorised migrants, increasingly by sending them to countries other than their own when direct returns are legally or logistically difficult.
Kuyateh was one of more than 30 third-country nationals deported by the United States to Ghana last year, according to lawyers in both countries who filed lawsuits on their behalf. Reuters found that at least 22 of those deported were subsequently sent by Ghana to their home countries, despite having received court-ordered protection in the United States intended to prevent exactly that outcome. The findings were based on interviews with six lawyers, legal filings in multiple jurisdictions and complaints submitted to the United Nations human rights office in Geneva.
Lawyers told Reuters that the repatriations appeared systematic and that none of their clients were given meaningful opportunities to challenge their removal before being sent onward. Reuters also uncovered similar practices in Equatorial Guinea, an oil-rich Central African nation that sent home at least three U.S. deportees who had been granted protection in American courts. These cases had not previously been reported.
Migrant advocates and human rights groups say the policy exploits gaps in international enforcement to bypass legal prohibitions on refoulement, the practice of returning individuals to countries where they face persecution or torture. Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, told Reuters that if third countries do not allow deportees to challenge repatriation, they cannot be considered safe. She said such arrangements effectively undermine core protections embedded in U.S. and international law.
The Department of Homeland Security rejected claims of wrongdoing. Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson, told Reuters that all individuals sent to Ghana and Equatorial Guinea were “illegal aliens” who had received due process and final removal orders. She declined to address the subsequent repatriations, saying that once migrants are in another country’s custody, responsibility shifts to that government. The U.S. State Department echoed the administration’s hardline stance, emphasizing its commitment to ending what it called illegal and mass immigration, but declined to comment on specific cases.
Ghanaian authorities have largely remained silent. The country’s foreign ministry, interior ministry and immigration service did not respond to Reuters’ questions. Ghana’s interior ministry announced an investigation into Kuyateh’s treatment by immigration officials on November 12, but no findings have been made public. The governments of Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea and Mauritania also declined to comment.
Reuters journalists later met Kuyateh after she fled Sierra Leone again, seeking refuge in another West African country she asked not be identified for safety reasons. She said she was struggling with the emotional toll of separation from her adult son and aging parents, all U.S. citizens. Having lived in Maryland for nearly three decades, she described America as her second home. Her lawyer said she had moved to the United States to escape Sierra Leone’s 1991–2002 civil war and that her application for asylum had been denied years earlier after she missed a hearing, leading to a removal order for overstaying a visa.
In seeking protection from deportation, Kuyateh told U.S. authorities that she had been detained and raped by government forces during the war and that her brother was later tortured because of their father’s political activities. Reuters could not independently verify her account, but a judge granted her withholding of removal, a form of relief barring deportation to a country where serious harm is likely. Her lawyer disputed DHS claims of due process, saying Kuyateh was not told she was being sent to Ghana until she was boarding a flight.
The legal landscape shifted further in June, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the administration could deport migrants to third countries without giving them a chance to argue the dangers they might face there, while a broader legal challenge continues. At least six African nations have since agreed to receive third-country deportees, though details of the agreements remain opaque. Reuters reported that the United States has, in some cases, offered financial or diplomatic incentives, including payments, visa concessions and trade benefits, though direct links are difficult to establish.
Ghana has said it accepts only West Africans without criminal records and insists its cooperation is grounded in humanitarian principles. Yet Ghanaian officials have also acknowledged discussions with U.S. counterparts about visas and tariffs. In December, Ghana announced that Washington had lifted a 15% tariff on cocoa and other agricultural products, a move Reuters could not definitively link to immigration cooperation.
Beyond Ghana, the human consequences of the policy continue to unfold. Reuters interviewed Diadie Camara, a 27-year-old Mauritanian who fled hereditary slavery and was later deported by the United States to Equatorial Guinea despite receiving protection from removal to Mauritania. He said he and others were detained in a hotel in Malabo and denied the chance to seek asylum. On Christmas Day, he was flown back to Mauritania via Morocco. Now in hiding, he told Reuters he fears being found and punished by the family that enslaved him.
Federal judges have raised concerns. At a September hearing, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said the arrangement with Ghana appeared designed to evade legal obligations not to send migrants into danger, though she said she lacked jurisdiction to halt the practice. The State Department told the court it had received diplomatic assurances that deportees would not be repatriated, assurances that lawyers say have not been honored.
As Reuters’ investigation shows, third-country removals have transformed what was once a legal safeguard into a perilous journey through multiple borders, where protections granted by U.S. courts can vanish without warning. For migrants like Kuyateh and Camara, the policy has meant not safety, but a return to fear, injury and life in hiding.
