This section describes what happens between the cell in the United States and the ground in another country. Every detail below is taken from a filed court record, and the source is named at the end of each account.
Ghana, 5 September 2025
Five people, citizens of Nigeria and The Gambia, each of whom an immigration judge had found would more likely than not face persecution, torture or death if returned home, were woken in the middle of the night at a United States immigration facility. They were shackled. They were put aboard a United States military cargo plane. They were not allowed to notify their families or their lawyers. One was sent without identification documents. Some were placed in straitjackets for as long as sixteen hours, and one says he now has difficulty walking because his was secured so tightly. They were told they were being taken to Ghana while they were in the air. None is Ghanaian. None had named Ghana in their immigration proceedings. On arrival they were taken to Dema Camp, which the court described as a remote, open-air detention facility surrounded by armed military guards.
These are the accounts the court recorded from the plaintiffs’ own declarations. It made no findings on them, because it held it had no jurisdiction to grant the relief sought. The full account is on the Ghana country guide, and the decision is in the register at D.A. v. Noem.
What the courts have said about the notice given
The policy in force since 9 July 2025 provides that where the United States has received diplomatic assurances the Department of State believes credible, a person “may be removed without the need for further procedures.” Where it has not, an officer serves a notice naming the country, but the policy states that immigration officers “will not affirmatively ask whether the [noncitizen] is afraid of being removed to the country of removal.” The wait before removal is generally at least twenty-four hours, and in exigent circumstances six. A person who does not volunteer a fear within twenty-four hours is removed.
A federal judge who set that policy out in full held that these procedures “fall far short of what court[s] in this District and Circuit have held that due process requires,” and found that the government had misrepresented what protection the policy actually gives. The decision is in the register at Elshourbagy v. Bondi.
Who is being moved this way
Not, on this record, people newly arrived or in hiding. The men in these cases had lived in the United States for decades. One was admitted as a lawful permanent resident in 1995 and had been living under an order of supervision since 2009, reporting when required. One came as the child of a refugee in 1989. One had been released by a federal court in 2000 because there was no reasonable likelihood he could be removed, and had lived under supervision for a quarter of a century.
The Coalition records one fact that cuts against a common description of these cases, because leaving it out would make the record less reliable. Several of the people in these decisions have criminal convictions, some of them serious, and several acquired them while living under supervision. One man had twenty-four convictions. He obtained an injunction all the same. In the one case in the register where the person had no criminal record at all, the punitive claim failed, because the countries the government was approaching were Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
The Coalition states this plainly because the principle does not need the people to be blameless, and is weaker if it is made to depend on that. Wong Wing concerned a man convicted of being unlawfully present and sentenced to hard labour. The Supreme Court did not ask whether he deserved better. It held that punishment cannot be added to expulsion without a trial, and that holding protects everyone or it protects no one.
Why now
The Coalition’s view, in its own voice, is that the purpose of treating people this way is not to remove them. It is to be seen removing them, and so to frighten others.
Petitioners in these cases have alleged that the government hand-picked states known for human rights abuses and instability, in order to spread fear and deter immigration. Courts have recorded that the government did not deny it. One court took judicial notice of an official video in which the President said that people who remain unlawfully “face punishments, including significant jail time, enormous financial penalties, confiscation of all property, garnishment of all wages, imprisonment and incarceration, and sudden deportation in a place and manner solely of our discretion,” and of a statement that people would be held at Guantanamo Bay because “it’s a tough place to get out” and “we don’t want them coming back.” The court found that these statements “do offer evidence that third country deportation is occurring as a punishment.”
A punishment aimed at an audience rather than at the person receiving it is the oldest form of making an example. The people in these cases are the example. The audience is everyone else.
Sources for this page
D.A. v. Noem, No. 1:25-cv-03135-TSC (D.D.C. 15 September 2025), ECF 41; Elshourbagy v. Bondi, 817 F. Supp. 3d 1102, 1114–15 (W.D. Wash. 2025), setting out the ICE memorandum of 9 July 2025; Van Nguyen v. Bondi, 818 F. Supp. 3d 1235 (W.D. Wash. 2026); Abubaka v. Bondi, No. 2:25-cv-01889-RSL (W.D. Wash. 17 November 2025); Pham v. Warden, 833 F. Supp. 3d 1092 (E.D. Cal. 2026); Baltodano v. Bondi, 815 F. Supp. 3d 1191 (W.D. Wash. 2025); Vashchuk v. Bondi, 826 F. Supp. 3d 1282 (W.D. Wash. 2026); Nguyen v. Scott, 796 F. Supp. 3d 703, 733–34 (W.D. Wash. 2025). All in the register of court decisions.