Rights Groups Accuse Ghana Of Chain Refoulement, Ask Court To Halt Secret US Deportation Deal

June 30 () — A coalition of human rights organisations has filed a landmark suit before the ECOWAS Court of Justice, accusing the Ghanaian government of participating in what it described as “chain refoulement” by receiving, detaining and deporting refugees transferred from the United States under a secret bilateral removal arrangement.

The suit, filed on Monday, accuses the Ghanaian government of violating international refugee law by accepting migrants deported from the United States under a confidential bilateral agreement and subsequently returning many of them to countries where they allegedly face torture, persecution and other serious human rights abuses.

The 27 applicants named in the case are part of a larger group of at least 60 migrants transferred by U.S. authorities to Ghana since September 2025 under the controversial arrangement.

According to the claimants, several of those deported had previously secured protection from removal through U.S. immigration courts after establishing that returning them to their countries of origin would expose them to torture or persecution. Despite those court protections, they allege that Ghanaian authorities placed a number of them on flights to their home countries within hours of arriving in Accra.

Others, they claim, were moved to neighbouring West African states and abandoned without identity documents, legal status, financial support or access to asylum procedures.

At the heart of the case is a deportation agreement between Ghana and the United States whose terms remain unknown. Lawyers representing the claimants said repeated requests by civil society organisations to obtain the agreement have been unsuccessful, while a separate legal challenge seeking its disclosure is still pending before Ghanaian courts.

The applicants argue that Ghana breached the principle of non-refoulement — a cornerstone of international refugee and human rights law that prohibits states from returning individuals to countries where they face persecution, torture or threats to life. They further contend that Ghana facilitated what they describe as “chain refoulement” by serving as a transit country in a U.S.-led deportation system that ultimately returned protected migrants to the very countries from which they had fled.

They are asking the ECOWAS Court to suspend all further transfers under the arrangement, compel the Ghanaian government to publish the agreement with Washington, award compensation to affected migrants and prohibit Ghana from entering into similar third-country deportation arrangements in the future.

Lawyers behind the suit described the case as one with far-reaching implications for migration governance in West Africa, arguing that it could establish an important legal precedent on the limits of the ECOWAS Free Movement Protocol. They contend that the protocol, which guarantees visa-free movement for ECOWAS citizens within the region, cannot lawfully be used to justify deportations orchestrated by a country outside the regional bloc.

The lawsuit also alleges that Ghana’s cooperation on accepting deportees was linked to Washington’s decision to remove visa restrictions previously imposed on Ghanaian travellers, raising questions over whether migration cooperation was exchanged for diplomatic concessions.

The Ghanaian government has defended its position, arguing that the deportees were West African nationals entitled to reside in any ECOWAS member state for up to 90 days without visas under the bloc’s free movement regime.

That position has, however, been challenged by opposition lawmakers and legal scholars in Ghana, who insist that the protocol was designed to facilitate voluntary travel within the region and not to legitimise the forced transfer of migrants under third-country deportation agreements.

The case is believed to be the first to test the application of the 1979 protocol in the context of third-country deportation arrangements.