Last week the United States government deported five citizens of Nigeria and the Gambia to Ghana. While at first glance this might not seem remarkable, it endangered their lives while at the same time triggering a frustrating court case that highlights the limits of both domestic and international law. (Here are links to news coverage from Politico, and the actual decision.)

Unlike other illegal immigrants, the U.S. could not legally deport the five men at the center of this case to their home countries. This is because they had won in U.S. courts what is called ‘fear-based relief.’ This means that a judge decided that ‘more likely than not’ they will face persecution, torture, or death should they be sent back home.

This does not grant them the right to stay in the U.S. indefinitely or mean that the U.S. cannot remove them, only that if the U.S. wants to remove them it has to be to a third country where they don’t face these fears. And usually that is very difficult to arrange, since countries are not keen to accept deportees who are not citizens.

But the Trump administration got Ghana to take them, and the U.S. also got Ghana to write what’s called a ‘diplomatic note’ stating that Ghana would not torture these individuals or send them to a place where they would be tortured. This made removal of these five men to Ghana, even though they have no connection to Ghana whatsoever, no friends or family there, and no access there to help, legally okay.

Then it turns out the conditions of this diplomatic note were not followed, or perhaps that Ghana’s supposed commitment not to send these people to a place they face torture was even a sham from the start. The five individuals allege that already while they were on the plane to Ghana, ICE officers told them they were going to be taken from there to their home countries. One of the five was in fact returned to his home country the day after his arrival in Ghana, and Ghana authorities have stated that the same will shortly be done to the remaining four as well.

These five men sued for relief in a U.S. District Court, claiming the U.S. government was violating the protection they had been granted by U.S. courts against being returned to their home country. The judge wrote she was ‘alarmed and dismayed’ by the government’s actions, but reluctantly denied their request. She said the reason is that judges cannot evaluate or second guess diplomatic agreements such as the one between the U.S. and Ghana, as that would be an intrusion into foreign policy. And now that the men are in Ghana, she has no jurisdiction to tell the government of Ghana what to do. In other words, she wrote in conclusion, her hands are tied.

The question therefore becomes, what is the solution? In a world divided into nearly 200 independent, sovereign countries, what can stop a government from using another country to easily get around whatever domestic legal restrictions it wants to evade? Since every country’s judicial system only has jurisdiction over its own territory, it seems quite simple for governments to get around their judiciaries by outsourcing whatever dirty deeds they want to commit to each other. This is particularly true for powerful countries such as the United States, which can offer money or other incentives for smaller countries to do its bidding.

The obvious answer would be to dream of some world body in charge of enforcing the law, but there does not seem to be any scenario by which that could be created. There is also plenty of reason to worry that some powerful new organization with jurisdiction over the whole world would end up being biased and corrupt, no matter how good the intentions behind it.

So is the only answer to hope that citizens don’t like their government circumventing the courts to violate human rights and vote out governments that do this? It may turn out that these sorts of things are a low priority for voters, and even at best that’s a long term process which offers no help to the five people whose rights are being violated now. Is there any other answer? I’m anxious to hear your thoughts.