ACCRA: Nineteen West African nationals deported by the US to Ghana have been moved to an unknown location, a lawyer for one of the deportees said.
Ana Dionne-Lanier, who represents one of the nationals, told The Associated Press on Thursday the group arrived in Ghana on Nov. 5 and were put in a hotel. They are protected from deportation to their home countries due to the risk of torture, persecution or inhumane treatment, she said.
“We don’t know the location of any of them,” Dionne-Lanier said, adding that neither she nor her client’s family has been able to reach him.
She said part of the group was sent by bus to an unknown border location between last weekend and Monday, while a second group, which included her client, was moved “under heavy armed guard” from the hotel around Wednesday.
The Ghanaian government didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dozens of deportees have been sent to Africa from the US since July after the Trump administration struck largely secretive agreements with at least five African nations — including Eswatini, Rwanda and South Sudan — to take migrants under a new third-country deportation program.
The Trump administration’s deportation program has faced widespread criticism from human rights experts, who cite international protections for asylum-seekers and question whether immigrants will be appropriately screened before being deported.
The administration has been seeking ways to deter immigrants from entering the US illegally and remove those who already have done so, especially those accused of crimes and including those who cannot easily be deported to their home countries.
Faced with court decisions that migrants can’t be sent back to their home countries, the Trump administration has increasingly been trying to send them to third countries under agreements with those governments.
Last month, the Ghanaian rights group Democracy Hub filed a lawsuit against Ghana’s government, alleging that its agreement with Washington is unconstitutional because it wasn’t approved by the Ghanaian parliament and that it may violate conventions that forbid sending people to countries where they could face persecution.
In September, the US Department of Justice argued in a federal court that it had no power to control how another country treats deportees. It said that Ghana had pledged to the US it wouldn’t send the deportees back to their home countries.
19 migrants deported by US to Ghana have been moved to an unknown location, lawyer says
https://arab.news/4vztx
19 migrants deported by US to Ghana have been moved to an unknown location, lawyer says
- “We don’t know the location of any of them,” Dionne-Lanier said
- Dozens of deportees have been sent to Africa from the US since July
Activist Peter Tatchell arrested over ‘globalize the intifada’ placard
- Arrest in London during Saturday protest an ‘attack on free speech,’ his foundation says
- Intifada ‘does not mean violence and is not antisemitic,’ veteran campaigner claims
LONDON: Prominent activist Peter Tatchell was arrested at a pro-Palestine march in central London, The Independent reported.
According to his foundation, the 74-year-old was arrested for holding a placard that said: “Globalize the intifada: Nonviolent resistance. End Israel’s occupation of Gaza & West Bank.”
The Peter Tatchell Foundation said in a statement that the activist labeled his Saturday arrest as an “attack on free speech.”
It added: “The police claimed the word intifada is unlawful. The word intifada is not a crime in law. The police are engaged in overreach by making it an arrestable offense.
“This is part of a dangerous trend to increasingly restrict and criminalize peaceful protests.”
Tatchell described the word “intifada,” an Arab term, as meaning “uprising, rebellion or resistance against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
“It does not mean violence and is not antisemitic. It is against the Israeli regime and its war crimes, not against Jewish people.”
According to his foundation, Tatchell was transported to Sutton police station to be detained following his arrest.
In December last year, London’s Metropolitan Police said that pro-Palestine protesters chanting “globalize the intifada” would face arrest, attributing the new rules to a “changing context” in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack in Australia.
“Officers policing the Palestine Coalition protest have arrested a 74-year-old man on suspicion of a public order offense. He was seen carrying a sign including the words ‘globalize the intifada’,” the Metropolitan Police said on X.
According to a witness, Tatchell had been marching near police officers with the placard for about a mile when the group came across a counterprotest.
He was then stopped and “manhandled by 10 officers,” said Jacky Summerfield, who accompanied Tatchell at the protest.
“I was shoved back behind a cordon of officers and unable to speak to him after that,” she said.
“I couldn’t get any closer to hear anything more than that; it was for Section 5 (of the Public Order Act).
“There had been no issue until that. He was walking near the police officers. Nobody had said or done anything.”
