Insight: Ghana took in Trump's deported West Africans. Then it forced them home

After US immigration agents detained Rabbiatu Kuyateh in July, she applied for protection from being deported to her native Sierra Leone, saying she feared being tortured because of her father's ties to the political opposition.

An immigration judge granted her request. But on 5 November, she was deported to Ghana, another West African country. There, she said, she was detained at a hotel for six days before being forcibly returned to her home country.

Video posted on social media at the time, verified by Kuyateh's family, shows men in green and black uniforms dragging her across the hotel floor to a waiting van. "I'm not going!" she screams.

The video made headlines, putting Ghana in the middle of a heated debate over US President Donald Trump's use of so-called third-country removals to of unauthorised immigrants who cannot easily be sent to their home countries - part of a vast crackdown that aims to deport millions.

Kuyateh, 58, was one of more than 30 third-country nationals deported by the United States to Ghana last year, according to lawyers in both countries who filed lawsuits on their behalf.

Of those, at least 22 were sent by Ghana to their home countries despite having obtained court-ordered protection in the US meant to prevent this from happening, according to a Reuters tally based on interviews with six lawyers, legal filings in both countries and complaints filed with the UN human rights office in Geneva.

The lawyers said Ghana's repatriations appeared systematic and that none of their clients had opportunities to raise legal objections before being sent home.

Reuters also found that Equatorial Guinea, an oil-rich Central African country, sent home at least three US deportees who had protection against this in the United States, according to interviews with one of the migrants and two lawyers. These repatriations have not previously been reported.

Migrant advocates and human rights groups say the Trump administration uses third-country removals to get around US and international laws that prohibit returning people to countries where they face persecution or torture, a practice known as "refoulement".

"If Ghana and Equatorial Guinea do not afford a meaningful opportunity to challenge repatriation, they are not safe third countries, and the United States should not be deporting individuals there," said Elora Mukherjee, who directs the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School in New York. "Third countries cannot be used to circumvent the prohibition on refoulement."

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said all those sent to Ghana and Equatorial Guinea were "illegal aliens" who received due process and had final removal orders.

"We are applying the law as written. If a judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them," she said in a statement to Reuters.

McLaughlin did not address questions about the subsequent repatriations, saying, "Once an illegal alien is in another country's custody, we refer you to them for questions."

Neither did the US State Department, which said the administration was "unwavering in our commitment to end illegal and mass immigration and bolster America's border security".

Ghana's foreign ministry, interior ministry and immigration service did not respond to questions about the handling of US deportees. Neither did the governments of Sierra Leone and Equatorial Guinea.

Ghana's interior ministry announced on November 12 that it was opening an investigation into Kuyateh's treatment by officials from the national immigration service. The results of that investigation have not been made public.