Updates: 5 November 2026
Third Country Deportation Watch recorded the first transfers to the Dominican Republic and further flights to Panama, Paraguay, Ghana, Cameroon, Liberia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Eswatini, Burundi and the Central African Republic. The Foreign Minister of Jamaica said nine of the 22 people sent there had left, a court in Arizona was told that a man sent to Equatorial Guinea was booked to fly back on 4 November, Human Rights First reported that a fourth flight to Iran may follow, and four amicus briefs were filed in the Supreme Court.
Third-Country Removal Is a Pretext for Refoulement. The United States Is Sending People Its Judges Protected Back to Torture and Persecution Through Transit Countries in Africa and Latin America.
People US immigration judges protected from return are being flown to third countries that send them home or hold them until they go. Courts, sworn declarations, the receiving governments and 60 Minutes document it. The Coalition sets out the record and the law.
Fourteen People Won Protection in American Courts. Now They Are Before the African Commission.
On 5 June 2026 five organisations filed a complaint against Equatorial Guinea at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, for fourteen people sent there from the United States. Every one of them had been granted protection by an American immigration judge. Three months on, the Commission has announced nothing.
She Won Her Case, and Was Deported Anyway: A Maryland Nurse Sent Through Ghana
On September 17, 2025 an immigration judge granted Rabbiatu Kuyateh withholding of removal to Sierra Leone, and both sides waived appeal. Forty-nine days later the United States flew her to Ghana without telling her where she was going, and six days after that Ghanaian officers dragged her out of a hotel and flew her to Sierra Leone.
Ghana Offered a Safe Haven. What the July 31 Flight Met Instead
Ghana's foreign minister said on camera in September 2025 that his country was offering itself as a safe haven to West Africans deported by the United States, and that those who arrived could stay ninety days. Ten months later a flight landed in Accra carrying more than thirty people, every one of whom held a United States finding that they could not safely be returned home. Within a day, some of them were.
Before Ghana, Djibouti: What ICE’s Own Declaration Says About U.S. Third-Country Removals
Four months before the deportation flights to Ghana, a court order stranded eight men on a United States naval base in Djibouti. What conditions were like there is not a matter of allegation. It is set out by the government itself, in a sworn declaration by a senior ICE official, and the Coalition publishes that declaration in full.
A Lawful Order, Carried Out in a Way the Constitution May Not Permit
In death penalty cases a court may stay an execution because the method would be cruel, without disturbing the sentence. This article is about the second question only: not whether a person may be removed, but how it is being done to them.
Federal Filing Details How People Sent Through Ghana Were Returned to Countries Where Judges Found Risks of Torture
A sworn declaration filed in D.V.D. v. U.S. Department of Homeland Security describes two U.S. deportation flights to Ghana and alleges that people with CAT protection and withholding of removal were subsequently sent to countries where U.S. immigration judges had already found they faced persecution or torture.
Monitoring Organisations Document Detention of Transferred People on Arrival
Human Rights Watch and the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants have documented what happens to people on arrival in receiving countries. Conditions on arrival bear directly on whether a transfer is consistent with Article 3.
Human Rights Watch, 'US/Africa: Expulsion Deals Flout Rights', 23 September 2025; U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Third Country Deportations Tracker, figures as recorded to June 2026.
Eleven West Africans Challenge Detention in Ghana After Transfer From the United States
Eight reportedly received U.S. withholding of removal or Convention Against Torture protection before being deported to Ghana, raising questions about detention, third-country removal and non-refoulement.