By : Kay Codjoe
A press release issued last week by Minkah-Premo, Osei-Bonsu, Bruce-Cathline & Partners (MPOBB) announced that Mr. Ofori-Atta had been granted a Green Card in the United States. Had the statement ended there, there would have been little controversy.
Instead, it went much further, inviting the public to believe that a United States immigration court had effectively found Ghana’s criminal charges against him “not credible.”
That is an extraordinary proposition.
Extraordinary propositions deserve extraordinary proof.
So I looked beyond the press release.
The publicly available immigration case information tells a more complicated story.
The matter sits before the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), the United States immigration court system. The case was docketed on 7 January 2026. It is assigned to Immigration Judge David Garduño. Most importantly, it is not recorded as concluded. It is recorded as pending, with a master hearing scheduled for 15 July 2026 at 1:00 p.m.
That single procedural fact changes the conversation.
If the Green Card issue has already been conclusively resolved, why does the immigration case remain pending? What issue is still before the court? Is the July hearing connected to adjustment of status, another immigration benefit, or an entirely different form of relief?
Then comes another interesting feature.
The available immigration case information repeatedly references the asylum employment authorization (EAD) clock and records that more than sixty days have elapsed on the processing timeline while also explaining the statutory 180-day benchmark associated with asylum-related proceedings. Standing alone, those references do not establish that Mr. Ofori-Atta applied for asylum. They do, however, raise legitimate procedural questions.
Was asylum, withholding of removal, protection under the Convention Against Torture, or another humanitarian avenue part of these proceedings? Or was adjustment of status pursued through an entirely different statutory pathway, such as a family or employment petition? If lawful permanent residence has indeed been granted, why does the immigration case remain active before Judge Garduño?
Those are not political questions.
They are procedural ones.
Procedure leaves a paper trail.
Which brings us to the only document that can settle this debate.
The court’s ruling.
A lawyer’s role is to advance a client’s case. A judge’s role is to decide it. Confusing the two blurs the distinction between advocacy and adjudication.
Meanwhile, the legal position in Ghana has not evaporated. The criminal charges remain before the High Court. The Office of the Special Prosecutor continues to state that service and extradition processes are ongoing. No Ghanaian court has acquitted Mr. Ofori-Atta. No publicly available decision of a United States extradition court has rejected Ghana’s request.
A Green Card, if granted, answers an immigration question. It does not automatically answer a criminal one. Nor does it transform an immigration judge into the final appellate authority over criminal prosecutions commenced in foreign jurisdictions.
Until then, the public is being asked to accept a legal conclusion without seeing the legal reasoning said to support it.
What exactly did the court decide? Why does the case remain pending? And what is scheduled to be heard on 15 July 2026?
Those answers belong in one place: the court’s ruling. Until that ruling is produced, every competing interpretation remains exactly that—a Miracle Narrative™, not a judicial determination.
