Adelaide Abankwah

Who is Adelaide Abankwah?

Adelaide Abankwah was a pseudonym taken by Ghanaian Regina Norman Danson when she tried to immigrate to the U.S. as a refugee claiming to be fleeing female genital cutting and seeking political asylum.

"Adelaide Abankwah" appeared in the USA in 1997 from Ghana. She claimed that she had inherited the position of a female chief of her tribe after her mother had died. The position, however, demanded that she would be a virgin. She had fallen in love with a Christian and if she went back, the tribe would discover she was not a virgin any more and she would be forced to submit to genital mutilation. Thus she applied for political asylum on March 29, 1997.

The INS officials suspected that her passport had been forged or otherwise altered, had her detained and began proceedings to expel her. Abankwah was detained for over two years in the privately operated Queens Detention Facility in Jamaica, Queens, when her application for asylum was twice rejected, first by an immigration judge, and then in 1999 by the Board of Immigration Appeals.

Eventually the INS investigation determined that the "Abankwah" was an impostor. Her real name was Regina Norman Danson. She had adopted the name of another Ghanaian woman who was living in Maryland and whose passport had been stolen in Ghana.