HOUSTON — Moussa Diawara, 57, from Mali, told CBS News' 60 Minutes that immigration agents detained him on July 11 at his home near Houston as he finished a night shift as an Uber driver. Diawara arrived in the United States at 32 on a tourist visa, married, and has two US citizen children. He has no criminal record, the programme reported. In 2012, a US immigration judge ruled he could not be deported to Mali because he would likely face persecution there — a protection known as withholding of removal — after he said he had converted to Christianity.

Source: CBS News / 60 Minutes — Inside Trump's third-country deportations (transcript), Oct. 25, 2026

According to 60 Minutes, Diawara was on a third-country deportation flight that left Texas on July 30 with 63 people, stopped in Sierra Leone and the Central African Republic, and landed in Ghana on July 31 — a country he says he had never visited and knew no one in. He says he and others were held in a hotel by armed guards without phone calls, and that within five days Ghanaian officials forced him onto a flight to Mali. He told the programme he was later homeless and in hiding in Mali before escaping, with help, to another country he asked not to be identified.

Source: CBS News / 60 Minutes — Inside Trump's third-country deportations (transcript), Oct. 25, 2026

Diawara showed the programme Department of Homeland Security-issued bag tags and a medication form listing Mali as his destination. DHS's top lawyer, James Percival, told 60 Minutes: "Well, he wasn't flown to Mali. He was flown to Ghana," and said he could not speak to why the paper said Mali. After the interview, DHS said the bag 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.

Source: CBS News / 60 Minutes — Inside Trump's third-country deportations (transcript), Oct. 25, 2026

ICE responded to the broadcast on its official X account, disputing the programme's description of Diawara as a Texas father and stating, as the agency's allegation, that he is a Malian national with a final order of removal; the agency also questioned the basis of his persecution claim. Those characterisations are ICE's position and are contested by Diawara's account to CBS. 60 Minutes reported that ICE has deported 25,000 people to dozens of third countries under the current programme, and that 17 of the 19 people it reached who were deported to Ghana said they were later sent, against their will, to countries US judges had ruled they should not be returned to. Immigration attorney Meredyth Yoon alleged US officials must know what Ghana does with people sent there; DHS's lawyer said that was not his understanding of how the process works.

Source: Primetimer — ICE responds to 60 Minutes interview with Moussa Diawara, Oct. 2026