Ghana is preparing to receive 40 more migrants deported from the United States in the coming days, Foreign Minister Okudzeto Ablakwa said Wednesday evening, following the arrival of 14 West African nationals in early September under a controversial US program.

Last week, Ghanaian President John Mahama said he had reached an agreement with Washington to accept third-country citizens expelled from the United States from West African countries.

He said Ghana had already received 14 deportees.

Deporting people to third countries – often where they have never lived – is one of US President Donald Trump's flagship measures against illegal immigration, with hundreds of deportations already carried out to Panama, El Salvador and South Sudan.

"I can tell you that we are expecting 40 more in the coming days," Minister Okudzeto Ablakwa told Channel 1 TV.

"For humanitarian reasons and pan-African solidarity, we accept our West African compatriots," he said.

The minister stressed that Ghana would not accept "criminals."

According to him, the deportees, who are screened before arrival, will be allowed to remain temporarily in Ghana or transit to their country of origin.

The 14 people who have already arrived in Ghana, from Nigeria, Togo, Mali, Gambia and Liberia, have "indicated that they want to return to their country of origin," the minister said.

Ghanaian authorities claimed last week that these people had already returned to their countries, a claim their lawyers dispute.

The Asian Americans Advancing Justice law firm, Grossman Young & Hammond, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government on September 12.

The lawsuit "challenges the U.S. government's unlawful deportation of five Nigerian and Gambian immigrants to Ghana, a country with which they have no ties," the organizations said in a statement Tuesday.

"Each of them had been granted protection from deportation by U.S. immigration judges, who determined that they would be at risk of persecution or torture if returned to their home countries," they added.

According to the lawyers, five of the 14 people deported to Ghana were still being held Monday evening "in a military camp surrounded by armed guards" near Accra.