Texas dad fights to return home after ICE deported him, then Ghana allegedly forced him to Mali

A Texas father deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to Ghana says local officials then forced him onto a flight to Mali, the country a U.S. judge had ruled he could not be sent to because he would likely be persecuted there.

Moussa Diawara, 57, told CBS News’ 60 Minutes that within days of arriving in Ghana, he was put on a flight to Mali. “I still say to myself, ‘This isn’t real,'” he said.

Diawara, from Mali, has spent nearly half his life in the United States, where he married, had two U.S. citizen children, worked and paid taxes. He arrived on a tourist visa at 32 and later sought refugee protection, arguing he would be persecuted in Mali after converting to Christianity. A U.S. immigration judge ruled in 2012 that he could not be deported to Mali. He has no criminal record.

ICE agents detained him on July 11 at his home near Houston. He was deported to Ghana on July 31, a country he had never visited. He said he and others were held in a hotel by armed guards. “I tell them, ‘This is kidnapping. You guys kidnapped us,'” he said.

The programme found that 17 of the 19 Ghana deportees it reached said they were later sent against their will to countries judges had ruled they should not be returned to.

The Department of Homeland Security’s top lawyer, James Percival, said: “Well, he wasn’t flown to Mali. He was flown to Ghana, but I can’t speak to why that piece of paper says that.” Ghana’s government declined to comment.

Diawara’s attorney, Reuben S. Kerben, has asked a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to order his return. The Supreme Court is expected to hear the third-country deportation case in December.