A Texas Uber driver finished his night shift to find ICE agents waiting at his home, then was deported to a country he had never visited
“I still say to myself, ‘This isn’t real.’”
Moussa Diawara wrapped up an Uber shift in suburban Houston on July 11 and saw ICE agents outside his home. According to CBS News, the 57-year-old was deported to Ghana on July 31, a country he had never visited, even though a judge had ruled he could not be sent to Mali, where he is from.
Diawara arrived in the U.S. on a visitor visa at 32 and overstayed it. He later asked for refugee status, saying his conversion to Christianity put him at risk in Mali, which has a Muslim majority and an Islamist insurgency. His record is clean.
A 2012 immigration court ruling barred his removal to Mali, though the government could pick a safe alternative. That order, called withholding of removal, let him obtain a work permit. He drove for Uber and lived in Texas alongside his wife and their two U.S. citizen children. In January, a TikTok claim about ICE rideshare drivers prompted a response from a Phoenix driver.
Two accounts of the Ghana flight
ICE held Diawara in Texas for three weeks, and he stated he had no access to his attorney or any judge. In Ghana, he claims, armed guards kept him and other deportees in a hotel without phone access, and officials forced him onto a flight to Mali within days. “I still say to myself, ‘This isn’t real,’” he told 60 Minutes. When the show first reached him in August, he was homeless in Mali with no money or identification.
Diawara believes U.S. officials knew Ghana would send him to Mali, and he points to paperwork. A medical form given to him on the plane listed “SHRC Mali,” short for Special High Risk Charter, and both bag tags from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) named Mali. “So they know 100% I’m going to Mali,” he stated.
DHS’s top lawyer, James Percival, stated that Diawara was flown to Ghana and that he could not explain the paperwork. In a follow-up, DHS stated that contractors made the bag tags and have no role in choosing destinations, and that the medical form was a clerical error. It added that Ghana had given diplomatic assurances about his safety and doubted his fear of persecution was credible.
According to the investigation, 63 people were on the flight, which departed July 30 with stops in Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic. Of 19 people deported to Ghana whom reporters reached, 17 stated they were later sent against their wishes to countries a U.S. judge had barred them from being sent to. Percival stated he was unaware of any instance of Ghana moving people onward without their consent. He suggested some people choose to go home, or that governments apply their own procedures, which he described as consistent with international law.
He also defended the program, stating that the administration is following the law Congress passed and that many deportees committed serious crimes. Per that investigation, 19% of passengers faced charges or convictions, another 19% had traffic violations, and 62% had no record.
Attorney Meredyth Yoon stated she believes U.S. officials knew of Ghana’s conduct and that sending more flights afterward violates international law. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats published a report calling the deals costly and saying they undermined U.S. interests.
An appeals court last month upheld a class-action ruling that found the policy unlawful for denying due process to deportees. The Supreme Court is letting removals continue until it takes up the matter in December. In another case, ICE kept Leqaa Kordia detained for a year after a judge ruled she could be released.
Diawara’s lawyer, Reuben S. Kerben, is asking a Washington, D.C., federal judge to compel his return. His wife, Barbara, is a nurse waiting in Texas with their children, Corey, 16, and Chloe, 12. “It feels really empty without him,” Corey stated.
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