Rabbiatu Kuyateh, a 58-year-old nurse who spent more than 30 years in the U.S. caring for Covid-19 patients and disabled adults, was detained by ICE agents during a routine check-in appointment in Baltimore on July 1, 2025, with her son Mohamed present. Kuyateh had fled civil war in Sierra Leone as a child and lived in the U.S. on renewable work permits, saying she had been granted a withholding of removal and had no criminal record: "I did not commit any crime; I always abided by the law." After four months in ICE custody, she was deported to Ghana, a country more than 1,000 km from Sierra Leone with which she had no ties. In November 2025, officials in Ghana attempted to forcibly remove her onward to Sierra Leone, dragging her by her hair into a van while she was shoeless and screaming. Video of the incident, filmed by another deportee, spread widely on social media.