Deported to Ghana, Then Mali: How U.S. Third-Country Removals Sent Protected Immigrants Into Danger

On the night of July 11th, Moussa Diawara was finishing an Uber shift and driving home to the Houston suburbs, where he owns a house with his wife and their children, who are U.S. citizens. When he pulled up, ICE agents were waiting. A dashcam recorded one of them telling him they had a warrant for his arrest for removal from the United States.

Diawara, now 57, came to the U.S. 25 years ago, at age 32, and overstayed a tourist visa. He has no criminal record. He applied for refugee protection, arguing he would be persecuted if sent back to Mali, the war-torn African country he is from. In 2012 a U.S. immigration judge ruled he could be deported, but not to Mali. That outcome is known as withholding of removal, and it gave him a U.S. work permit. After three weeks in ICE detention in Texas, during which he says he could not speak to his lawyer or a judge, he was put on a plane to West Africa.

His case sits inside a much larger one. According to a five-month 60 Minutes investigation, nearly one million people were deported from the U.S. in the first year and a half of President Trump's second term. Most went to their home countries, but about 25,000 were sent to dozens of "third countries," places they may never have visited and where they may not speak the language. Iranians were sent to Panama. Such removals can be legal, and earlier administrations carried them out, but not at this scale. The third countries receive millions of dollars in aid or other benefits from the U.S. The investigators found cases in which people ended up where U.S. immigration judges had said they would likely be persecuted or tortured.

Diawara's flight left Texas on July 30th with 63 people aboard and stopped in Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic and Ghana. He landed in Ghana on July 31st. He says he and others were held in a hotel by armed guards and not allowed to call anyone. He knew no one in the country. Within five days, he says, Ghanaian officials forced him onto a flight to Mali. The reporters obtained the names of everyone on the flight. Of 19 people they reached who had been sent to Ghana, 17 said Ghana quickly moved them, against their will, to countries U.S. judges had ruled they should not be returned to. An eyewitness confirmed that video of a woman being dragged toward a deportation flight shows Ghanaian officials pulling Rabbiatu Kuyateh, a nurse who lived in the U.S. for 30 years.

In Mali, Diawara says, he was dropped off with no money or ID. He had converted to Christianity, and Mali is a Muslim-majority country with an Islamist insurgency. He lived on a bench, which he said was his bed for two weeks. After three weeks, local truckers helped him reach another African country, which he asked not to be named. He showed the reporters paperwork he says U.S. officials handed him on the plane, along with a small supply of medication. It lists the destination as Mali, as do both of his DHS-issued bag tags.

James Percival, the top lawyer at the Department of Homeland Security, said he was not aware of any case in which Ghana sent someone against their will to a country where they held withholding of removal. He suggested people might consent to go home and not be truthful about it, or that Ghana applied its own procedures consistent with international law. He said he had not seen the video of Kuyateh. DHS later said the bag tags were produced by contractors who are not part of the process that determines destination, and called the medication form a clerical error. DHS also said Ghana gave diplomatic assurances for Diawara's safety and questioned whether his fear of persecution was credible. Ghana's government declined to comment.

Percival defended the program as a way to remove serious criminals whose home countries refuse them, citing Eswatini and South Sudan as accepting people convicted of crimes including first degree murder, armed robbery, kidnapping and sexual assault. He did not have the share of deportees who are violent offenders. The reporters found a criminal charge or conviction for 19 percent of the 63 people on Diawara's flight, including theft, assault, drugs and weapons possession. Everyone else had traffic violations or no record.

Immigration attorney Meredyth Yoon says the government was warned about Ghana's conduct in a lawsuit last year, yet sent 10 more flights there, which she believes violates international law. Last month, an appeals court upheld a ruling in a class action that found the third-country policy unlawful because it denied deportees due process. The deportations are continuing until the case is heard in December.