Lawsuit Accuses Trump Officials of More Wrongful Deportations

Lawyers for five migrants deported to Ghana last week accused the Trump administration on Friday of ignoring court-ordered protections for their clients, the latest legal challenge to a campaign that has been carried out with remarkable speed and a lack of transparency.

In an interview on Friday evening, the lawyers said the case bore similarities to that of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to his home country of El Salvador earlier this year and who continues to fight a labyrinthine legal battle as the administration tries to deport him to various African countries. As in his case, the suit, filed in the Federal District Court in Washington, raised the question of whether the administration had defied judges’ orders protecting the migrants.

The Trump administration has brokered deals with several African nations, Rwanda, Uganda, Eswatini and — most recently — Ghana, to accept deported migrants, many of whom have no connection to those countries. Administration officials, under pressure from President Trump to carry out his promised mass deportation operation, have moved swiftly on these so-called third-country deportations.

Lawyers with Asian Americans Advancing Justice, representing the five migrants, accused the administration of using its agreement with Ghana to ignore the legal protections that prevent deportation to their home countries because they fear torture or persecution. In essence, they argued, the administration has enabled an “end run” around those prohibitions, by first removing them to Ghana, and then claiming it is powerless to stop Ghana from sending them to their home countries.

“Defendants have enlisted the government of Ghana to do their dirty work,” the lawyers said in their filing. “Despite the minimal, pass-through involvement of the Ghanaian government, defendants’ objective is clear: Deport individuals who have been granted fear-based relief from being sent to their countries of origin to those countries anyway, in contravention to the rulings of U.S. immigration judges and U.S. immigration law.”

One type of legal protection for those migrants includes a status called “withholding of removal,” the same protection that should have prevented Mr. Abrego Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador.