60 Minutes report on third-country deportations draws DHS challenge over Moussa Diawara's case

Left · 1A five-month 60 Minutes investigation, published by CBS News on 25 October 2026, says nearly one million people were deported from the US in the first year and a half of President Trump's second term, and about 25,000 of them were sent to countries other than their own. 1 Left · 1CBS says such deportations can be legal and past administrations have carried them out, but not at this scale, and that it found cases where people ended up in places where US immigration judges said they would likely be persecuted or tortured. 1 Left · 1The report centres on Moussa Diawara, 57, who has lived in the US for 25 years, overstayed a tourist visa, and has a wife and children who are US citizens. CBS says ICE arrested him outside his Houston-area home on 11 July. In 2012 an immigration judge ruled he could be deported, but not to Mali. 1

Mixed · 2Diawara says he was flown to Ghana on 31 July, held in a hotel by armed guards without phone access, and within five days forced onto a flight to Mali, where he was homeless and in hiding. He later left Mali for another African country he asked CBS not to name. 1 2 Left · 1CBS obtained the names of all 63 people on the flight, which left Texas on 30 July and stopped in Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic and Ghana. It says 17 of the 19 people it reached who were sent to Ghana reported being quickly moved, against their will, to countries US judges had ruled they should not be returned to. 1 Left · 1Diawara showed CBS a document and two bag tags from the flight listing Mali as the destination, and said this showed the US knew he would end up there. DHS said the tags were produced by contractors who are not part of the process that determines the destination, and called the medication form a clerical error. Ghana's government declined to comment. 1

Left · 1In the interview, DHS top lawyer James Percival said third-country removals are widely misunderstood and have kept Americans safer. Percival said they were not aware of any case where Ghana sent people against their will to a home country where they had withholding of removal, and suggested deportees might have consented or that Ghana applied its own procedures. DHS also said Ghana had given diplomatic assurances for Diawara's safety and questioned the credibility of his fear claim. 1 Right · 1On 26 October the Washington Examiner reported that the administration disputed 60 Minutes's characterisation. Percival said on X that Diawara's file shows the claimed reason for fearing Mali was that he is gay, which Percival offered as evidence of immigration fraud. DHS said on X that Diawara, who is married to a woman and has two children, claimed he would be persecuted for homosexuality. 2 Mixed · 2CBS reports that Diawara's fear rested partly on his conversion to Christianity in a Muslim-majority country with an Islamist insurgency. The Examiner says both sides agree on the basic outline of his case but differ over the basis of his claim, and notes that nearly all public information about him comes from the CBS report and the administration's competing claims. 1 2

Right · 1DHS also called the bag-tag claim "FAKE NEWS" and said aliens are removed to the third country that agreed to accept them, with contractors defaulting to home-country information already in the file. 2