NEW YORK, NEW YORK - April 19, 2025: People holding signs at an Anti-Trump protest against the current administration's actions on immigration and civil rights in Midtown Manhattan. (Christopher Penler / Shutterstock)
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to bring back a Nigerian man it secretly deported despite a court order protecting him from return to Nigeria — after Immigration and Customs Enforcement lured him in with a fake appointment and shipped him through three countries via an unmarked border crossing.
Etinosa Osahon, a 49-year-old green card holder who'd lived in the U.S. since 2002, had been granted deferral of removal under the Convention Against Torture after immigration judges found he'd been tortured twice by Nigerian officials over his former membership in the extremist group Boko Haram, including being hung from the ceiling and forced to stare at the sun. For 14 years, he complied with every ICE check-in requirement without incident, married a U.S. citizen, and raised three American children.
In May, ICE emailed Osahon telling him to report for what officials described only as a routine medical update. Once he arrived, agents immediately detained him, confiscated his phone, and refused his request for a lawyer. Despite his protected status, ICE flew him in restraints through Texas, Miami, Senegal and Cameroon before landing in Ghana. When Ghanaian officials tried forcing him toward Nigeria, he refused — so they marched him on foot through the bush across an unofficial border crossing into Togo and abandoned him roadside with no documents, no money, and no way home.
U.S. District Judge Michelle Williams Court didn't mince words in a scathing ruling.
"The risk of harm shocks the conscience," the judge wrote.
The court found the administration essentially conceded it violated every regulation governing Osahon's case, comparing the episode directly to the high-profile wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. She ordered the government to preserve all records and explain by Sept. 3 exactly what steps it's taking to bring Osahon home — where he currently remains in hiding, battling malaria, unable to speak the local language, and fearing for his life as an undocumented former Boko Haram member whose identity ICE had already publicized on social media.