The Return to Nowhere: African Migrants and U.S. Deportation to Ghana

This cross-continental reporting project investigates how U.S. deportation policies are reshaping lives on two continents.

Through on-the-ground reporting in Ghana and the U.S., this series follows the growing crisis surrounding the U.S.–Ghana deportation agreement. The project reveals how deportees—many long settled in the United States—return to a country they barely know, confronting stigma, displacement, and fractured families.

By tracing their journeys from detention and self-deportation in cities including Atlanta and Minneapolis to neighborhoods in Accra, including Nima and Madina, this reporting project exposes how U.S. immigration enforcement reverberates through African communities.

It examines how international agencies—including the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees—are adapting refugee frameworks for deported Black migrants, uncovering a global system where deportation functions as an extension of historical color lines.