Robert Porter Jackson, the US Ambassador to Ghana
Robert Porter Jackson, the US Ambassador to Ghana, has said the US government will again embark on another mass deportation of Ghanaians who have overstayed their visas.
Appearing before the parliamentary Select Committee on Foreign Affairs to explain circumstances leading to the expatriation of 63 Ghanaians from the States recently, the US diplomat revealed that over 7,000 Ghanaians had overstayed their permit and were being processed to be deported back home.
He further told the Committee that most of these Ghanaians have been involved in different criminal acts, a situation that has prompted the mass deportation exercise by the US authorities.
Meanwhile, Mr Jackson has dismissed assertions that the 63 Ghanaians who were deported last week were manhandled.
Some human rights activists condemned the US for keeping the deportees in shackles on a flight to Ghana. They also criticised US officials for treating the deportees in an inhumane manner.
However, Mr Jackson told the committee on Thursday, June 22 that such assertions were false.
“I flatly reject the idea that we treated people inhumanely. On the contrary I think we treated them as best as possible given the fact that they refused to leave the United States voluntarily,” he said.
He explained that the 63 who were deported came on a chartered air flight because they had refused to board a civilian aircraft to return voluntarily.
“I do not consider the conditions in which they were returned inhumane. They were fed, they had some freedom of movement on the flight. It was restricted for the safety of everyone on board but it is not as if they were chained to their seats, and there will be additional deportations…” he said.
