A Guinean immigrant has lived in the U.S. legally for two decades. Unable to deport him to his homeland, ICE wants to send him to a third country.

The lawyer for a Guinean man who has lived legally in the United States for nearly 20 years asked a federal judge to free him from ICE detention on Thursday, even as government attorneys described plans to proceed with his deportation.

Mamadou Fadel Cherif, 56, was arrested by immigration officers as he left his West Oak Lane home for work on July 13 and remains in custody at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in central Pennsylvania.

“There’s a human being underlying these proceedings,” attorney Conor Deane told U.S. District Judge Juan Sanchez, as the lawyers debated complicated immigration regulations and law. “An exceptional human being. … He’s the epitome of who you would want to live in this country.”

Fadel Cherif works in dining services at La Salle College High School, the private Catholic boys school in Montgomery County, and also drives for Uber. He’s the main support for his wife, who has legal permanent residency, and for their four American-born sons, one of whom is a Marines reservist.

Deane sought Fadel Cherif’s immediate release, saying he has been illegally detained and denied due process under the law.

Nearly two decades ago, Fadel Cherif was granted what’s called Withholding of Removal, which allows him to live and work in the United States, and bars his deportation to his West Africa homeland, where the U.S. government agrees he could be harmed or killed over his political beliefs.

That status does not shield him from being sent to a third country, however, if ICE can find a nation willing to accept him. Those kinds of third-country deportations are difficult for the agency to achieve, but the Trump administration has pushed to accomplish them.

The Migration Policy Institute estimates that during its first year back in office, the Trump administration carried out about 15,000 removals to third countries, a fraction of the total 396,000 deportations.

Deportations of those who have Withholding of Removal are even more rare, according to the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights in Washington. The center says it is pointless to detain those people while attempting to deport them. If ICE were to release a foreign national and later identify an appropriate third nation, it could simply detain them again.

In court Thursday, the judge noted that authorities plan to deport Fadel Cherif to Ghana ― sparking courtroom debate over the West African land’s assurances to the U.S. government that he would be safe there.

Deane said those assertions are not sufficient to deport someone. He described Ghana’s diplomatic assurances as “very boilerplate,” and not barring that nation from sending his client to another country or even back to Guinea.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Landon Jones told the judge he did not have additional information regarding Ghana’s assurances, but the U.S. State Department has deemed them credible.

Fadel Cherif’s wife and two of his sons, who were in court for the proceedings, declined to comment.

Advocacy groups and immigration lawyers say the Trump administration is increasingly arresting and detaining migrants who have been granted withholding, keeping them in custody while it pursues removal to a third country.

One challenge to deportation is even those nations that willingly accept their own citizens can be disinclined to accept other foreign nationals.

Ricky Palladino, another lawyer for Fadel Cherif, said earlier that there’s no reason for ICE to detain him. He has no criminal record, but does have work authorization, a Social Security number, and a driver’s license.

Fadel Cheriff is nearing the end of his eighth week in detention.

In Guinea, a nation of 12 million people that’s roughly twice the size of Pennsylvania, Fadel Cherif was jailed by the government after protesting the results of his country’s 1998 presidential election, which was marred by irregularities. He later fled in fear of being rearrested, using a document that showed a different Guinean identity to enter the United States in New York in November 2003.

Fadel Cherif was denied asylum — which carries a path to citizenship — when he could not prove that he had filed within a year of entering the United States.

To receive Withholding of Removal, applicants must prove they were persecuted in the past or that their lives would be threatened in the future, that the government harmed or will harm them ― or failed to control others who might do so. They also must show that moving to a different part of their home country would not provide safety.

When Withholding of Removal is granted, the immigration judge also enters a deportation order, then tells the government it cannot deport the person to their homeland. In that way the removal is “withheld.”

People with that status cannot leave the United States without triggering deportation, have no path to citizenship, and cannot petition to bring family members to this country.

Fadel Cherif’s lawyers filed what’s called a habeas petition, which asks a judge to order the government to prove it has the lawful authority to detain the person. The term “habeas corpus” translates from Latin as “you have the body,” and such filings are considered crucial constitutional safeguards against wrongful imprisonment.

Habeas petitions, once rare, have dominated the docket at Philadelphia federal court since the Trump administration initiated a policy of mandatory detention last year. That provoked an avalanche of lawsuits by immigrants who challenged their incarceration, demanding their freedom or at least a bond hearing in Immigration Court.

Judge Sanchez gave no indication of when he would issue a ruling.