Soraya, a pseudonym for a Ghanaian woman, fled to the United States in 2024 after her family discovered her sexual orientation and people sought to harm her. She was granted a US withholding of removal, a protection measure meant to prevent her from being sent back to a country where she would face persecution, but was deported to Cameroon on January 15, 2026, alongside two other Ghanaian LGBTQ+ women, on the first flight of third-country removals. She and others described being shackled during the journey, with one saying, "I felt like a terrorist because what on earth did I do to be shackled like that." The deportees were held for about two months at a government compound in Yaounde and only allowed to leave after staging a hunger strike; they must now return to the compound by sundown and are barred from working while their asylum applications in Cameroon remain pending. Their lawyer, Fru Joseph, has raised concerns that the women face a heightened risk of persecution in a country they have no ties to.