US stops issuing visas after Ghana refuses to take back deportees

The Trump administration announced late Thursday it will stop
issuing some visas to citizens of the African country Ghana,
following the government’s refusal to take back citizens the U.S.
has tried to deport.

“Ghana has failed to live up to its obligations under
international law to accept the return of its nationals ordered
removed from the United States,” Homeland Security Secretary
Kirstjen Nielsen said. “The United States routinely cooperates with
foreign governments in documenting and accepting U.S. citizens when
asked, as appropriate, as do the majority of countries in the
world, but Ghana has failed to do so in this case. We hope the
Ghanaian government will work with us to reconcile these
deficiencies quickly.”

Nielsen asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to sanction visas
this week, and the top diplomat instructed U.S. consular officers
in Ghana to impose visa restrictions on certain categories of
applicants, which the DHS statement did not specify.

A 2017 annual report by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the
DHS agency tasked with removing people, said 305 people from Ghana
were slated to be repatriated from Oct. 1, 2016, through Sept. 30,
2017. More recent data was not available and it’s not clear how
many people Ghana refused to take back in 2018.

DHS threatened to expand the visa sanctions to additional visa
groups if Ghana continues to refuse repatriated people.

Countries accepting back citizens must issue travel documents
for those being repatriated before the U.S. can deport them. In
Ghana’s case, the government refused to supply ICE with those
documents.

Because of the Supreme Court decision on Zadvydas v. Davis, ICE
must release people in its custody after six months if a person
does not have a pathway toward being deported.

While a presidential candidate, President Trump promised to take
more action to get countries to take back people the U.S. sought to
deport. A dozen countries that had fought the change are now
working with the U.S. government to take back their citizens since
the U.S. began imposing visa sanctions in 2017.

In September 2017, the administration imposed visa sanctions on
Guinea, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, and Cambodia for the same
reason.

As of last July, nine countries remained uncooperative. There
are still sanctions on Cambodia, Eritrea, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.
Myanmar and Laos were determined to still be in violation and the
U.S. government banned certain visa applicants.