By Townhall Chicago News Staff
CBS News’ “60 Minutes” aired a segment Sunday examining the deportation of Moussa Diawara, a Malian national removed from the United States after 25 years without a criminal record.
The segment, reported by CBS News correspondent Gianna Toboni, focused on the Trump administration’s use of third-country deportations and a pending Supreme Court case over the policy.
Diawara, 57, entered the U.S. on a tourist visa at age 32 and settled in suburban Houston, where he worked as an Uber driver, owned a home with his wife, Barbara, a registered nurse, and raised two U.S.-born children. He has no criminal record. In 2012, a U.S. immigration judge ruled Diawara could be removed from the country but could not be sent back to Mali, which allowed him to obtain a U.S. work permit.
ICE agents arrested Diawara on July 11 at the end of a night shift, according to the report. He was held in Texas for three weeks without access to his attorney or an immigration judge before being placed on a deportation flight to Ghana, a country with which he had no prior connection. Ghanaian authorities later transported him to Mali, the country the 2012 ruling had barred him from being sent to. At the time the segment aired, Diawara had left Mali for an undisclosed third country and was in hiding, according to the report.
A federal appeals court has ruled the administration’s third-country removal policy unlawful on due-process grounds. The Supreme Court has allowed the policy to continue while it reviews the case, with a hearing scheduled for December.
DHS General Counsel James Percival defended the policy in the segment.
“This administration is following the law that Congress has passed,” Percival said, adding that such removals serve the department’s mission of protecting public safety.
Percival was confirmed as DHS General Counsel after testifying before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in June 2025.
Toboni’s report noted that passengers on deportation flights under the policy have included people without criminal records.
“A lot of these people are nurses, their moms, their Uber drivers,” Toboni said in the segment. “Is that part of what this administration is trying to do?”
According to CBS News, 19% of the 63 people aboard Diawara’s deportation flight had criminal charges or convictions; the rest had traffic violations or no criminal record.
The Supreme Court’s review of the third-country deportation policy is scheduled for December.
