Ranking Member on the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament, Abu Jinapor
The Minority in Parliament has renewed its call for the government to lay the Ghana-US deportee agreement before the House for ratification.
In a Facebook post on Saturday, October 11, 2025, the Ranking Member on the Foreign Affairs Committee and MP for Damongo, Samuel Abu Jinapor welcomed Foreign Affairs Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa’s assurance that alleged Salvadoran criminal Kilmar Abrego Garcia would not be deported to Ghana despite earlier reports.
Reacting to the clarification issued by the minister following the initial reports, Jinapor, described the episode as underscoring the urgency for parliamentary scrutiny under Article 75 of the 1992 Constitution, which mandates ratification of international agreements to protect national sovereignty and ensure accountability.
US government backtracks on decision to deport Salvadoran to Ghana
He noted that the agreement’s implementation without legislative approval risks contradicting Ghana’s non-alignment policy and could expose the country to unwanted deportees.
The Minority has criticised the deal since its announcement last month, when President John Dramani Mahama revealed Ghana had accepted 14 West African deportees (including Nigerians and a Gambian), who were later repatriated or transferred.
The opposition lawmakers argue that the arrangement, part of the US’s mass deportation drive, has already strained resources and drawn international scrutiny, with fears of up to 40 more arrivals.
With Parliament resuming on October 21, 2025, Jinapor urged the government to seize the opportunity to table the agreement before the House to promote public confidence and democratic principles.
“With Parliament set to resume on 21st October 2025, Government has a golden opportunity to uphold this constitutional requirement. We therefore reiterate our call on Government to take the necessary steps to lay the agreement before Parliament. Doing so will promote transparency, restore public confidence, and strengthen the principles of accountability that underpin our democratic governance,” he wrote.
Who is Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and why has the US failed to deport him to Africa?
The Abrego clarification by the minister came after ABC News reported on October 10, 2025, that the US Department of Homeland Security intended to send Garcia, a 30-year-old facing human smuggling charges and previously wrongly deported to El Salvador, to Ghana under the agreement.
Ablakwa explained that the pact, reached in September 2025, is limited to receiving a small number of non-criminal West African nationals on humanitarian grounds and in the spirit of pan-African solidarity, not as a trade-off for US visa concessions under the Trump administration.
He stressed that Ghana’s position against accepting Garcia had been firmly conveyed to US authorities, leading to the retraction of the deportation notice.
GA/MA
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