In just 12 months, President Trump has expelled nearly as many illegals as Biden managed in four years and illegal crossings on the southern border are 10 times lower.
Trump's immigration program carries an underappreciated risk: attempts by malign foreign actors to abuse American sovereign law enforcement agencies such as ICE for their own nefarious benefit.
When foreign governments fail to secure what they want through courts, diplomacy, or extradition treaties, the temptation to test whether U.S. immigration enforcement can be repurposed for their own political ends becomes very real.
Extradition law is widely abused already. INTERPOL's Red Notices are international arrest warrants scandalously used by America’s enemies like Russia, China, and Iran to harass dissidents, freeze assets and force political opponents to return to be persecuted.
Even Ghana, a supposed friend of the United States, persuaded INTERPOL to issue a Red Notice against a leading member of its democratic opposition – former finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta - demanding his return from the US to stand trial back home on made-up charges.
A few months later INTERPOL suspended the Red Notice after it had serious doubts about its legality and political motivation.
But then last month, Ofori-Atta was picked up by ICE in Washington DC where he was recovering from cancer treatment.
Ofori-Atta had entered the United States lawfully and applied – months ago – for adjustment of status based on his U.S.-citizen son, a routine and legal process that places an applicant in authorized stay.
What now emerges from media interviews given by Ghanaian officials to their country’s media is that their government had worked with U.S. counterparts at the U.S. Embassy in Ghana to have Ofori-Atta’s visa revoked and then leveraged it to apply to have ICE arrest him.
"Ken Ofori-Atta’s visa was revoked upon intervention by the Ghanaian government,” said Ghana’s Minister for Government Communication, Felix Ofosu Kwakye in a local TV interview.
"Because it was noticed that the extradition process can take a bit of time. However, if the visa is revoked even his stay in the United States is made untenable unless he is able to show at this hearing that he has cause to do so."
In other words, Ghana's government are literally bragging on TV about leveraging ICE to bypass proper U.S. due process. The "hearing" the minister refers to in the interview was Ofori-Ata’s U.S. deportation hearing, which was held on Jan. 20, 2026.
But . . . the Judge was forced to suspend proceedings until Feb. 19, as the bumbling Ghanaian government had failed to produce any documentary evidence of their extradition request. Ofori-Atta will remain in ICE custody until that date.
Ofori-Atta’s connections to the US are long and very commendable. A student first at Columbia then Yale, and he joined the Wall Street banks Salomon Brothers and Morgan Stanley before returning to Ghana to found his own investment institution, Databank.
Ofori-Atta became finance minister in 2017, he served seven years in the position, until shortly before the current socialist president won the 2024 election.
He is now under indictment on charges related to his actions in office as finance minister.
Should these charges be justified – and few believe they are anything but lawfare by his political opponents – they would be a complete contrast to his unblemished career in finance in the United States.
Still, some might say who cares if a former Ghanaian finance minister is extradited from the US to stand trial in Ghana, or how this is done.
There's no reason why this should matter to Americans.
And if there's one less migrant in the country, what's the harm in sending him home by any means.
This would be wrong.
The United States would not be the United States if we let other countries effectively decide who we allow to stay in our country.
We would not be the United States if we deport and extradite cancer-patient democratic opposition leaders – as Ken Ofori-Atta now is – into the arms of a socialist government that is using lawfare, special prosecutors, and all means necessary against its political opponents.
The current Ghanaian President – far-left socialist John Mahama – has dismissed at least four separate fraud cases against leaders of his own party, while at the same time going to the most extraordinary lengths to jail Ofori-Atta, his only serious political opponent.
This is the Biden-attritional lawfare playbook, copy and paste, Ghana-style.
None of this makes Ken Ofori-Atta innocent, but it does make the chance of him receiving a fair trial back home close to zero.
We wouldn't send Iranian or Cuban opposition leaders back home to stand trial. We shouldn't be doing the same to opposition leaders from Ghana, when it's clear their justice system is just as crooked.
The United States – which stands for liberty and justice – should not be facilitating the deportation of people to stand trial in those circumstances – and it certainly should not be allowing its law enforcement agencies to be abused by foreign, socialist governments.
Colonel (Retired) Wes Martin - a retired U.S. Army colonel, served as the first Senior Antiterrorism Officer for all Coalitions in Iraq and holds a MBA in International Politics and Business. Read more Col. (Ret.) Wes Martin Insider articles --- Click Here Now.
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