A U.S. judge says she is powerless to stop the return of men in Ghana’s custody to countries where U.S. immigration judges determined they faced torture or persecution

FILE - Ghana's President John Mahama speaks to the media at the Jubilee House in Accra, Ghana, Sept. 10, 2025. (Ghana Presidency via AP, File)

A U.S. judge said that she was powerless to stop the return of four men in Ghana’s custody to countries where U.S. immigration judges determined they faced torture or persecution, declining to intervene in a victory for the Trump administration.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said that the administration appeared to be circumventing the U.N. Convention Against Torture by sending the West Africans to Ghana, but that her “hands are tied.”

Chutkan wrote that she was “alarmed and dismayed by the circumstances under which these removals are being carried out, especially in light of the government’s cavalier acceptance of Plaintiffs’ ultimate transfer to countries where they face torture and persecution.”

The ruling Monday night in federal court in Washington clears the way for 14 West Africans to be sent to their home countries from Ghana, including the four covered by the ruling. They appear to be destined for Nigeria and Gambia, despite U.S. immigration judges finding they have reason to fear persecution or torture.

Chutkan said it was the latest example of the Trump administration evading prohibitions on deportations by sending people outside the country anyway and claiming that U.S. judges had no power to order them back.

The judge distinguished it from the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the administration wrongly sent to a prison in his native El Salvador. In the Africa case, unlike in Abrego Garcia, she wrote, the administration could legally send them to Ghana.

Lee Gelernt of the American Civil Liberties Union, which joined the lawsuit, said in a statement: “We are obviously disappointed by the ruling but there’s no reason why the administration should require a court to tell them to obey the laws prohibiting the transfer of individuals to countries where it’s likely they will be tortured and persecuted.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lawyers for the four West Africans said earlier Monday that they remained in Ghana, contradicting a Ghanaian official. Felix Kwakye Ofosu, Ghana’s minister for government communications, told The Associated Press that all 14 — 13 Nigerians and one Gambian — “have since left for their home countries.”

The administration, faced with decisions by immigration judges that people can't be sent back to their home countries, has increasingly been trying to send them to third countries with which the administration has created agreements to take deportees.

Ghana has joined Eswatini, Rwanda and South Sudan as African countries that have received migrants from third countries who were deported from the U.S.

The lawsuit filed on behalf of some of the migrants said they were held in “straitjackets” for 16 hours on a flight to Ghana and detained for days in “squalid conditions” after they arrived there. It said Ghana was doing the Trump administration’s “dirty work.”

Ghanaian Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa pushed back on criticism that the decision was an endorsement of U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration policies. Ablakwa said Monday that Ghana didn't receive any financial compensation from the U.S. over the deportation.

“We just could not continue to take the suffering of our fellow West Africans,” the minister said. “For now, the strict understanding that we have with the Americans is that we are only going to take West Africans.”

Nigeria’s government said that it wasn't briefed about its nationals being sent to Ghana and that previously it had received Nigerians deported directly from the U.S.

“We have not rejected Nigerians deported to Nigeria. What we have only rejected is deportation of other nationals into Nigeria,” said Kimebi Imomotimi Ebienfa, a spokesperson for Nigeria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.