This article analyses political breakdown in a refugee camp with a case study of the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana. The analysis focuses on a series of social protests by Liberian refugees that prompted the intervention of host police and ended with the hostile repatriation of thousands of people back to Liberia. I argue that the transformation of the social protests into ‘criminal acts’ subject to police action constituted a political breakdown, and highlight three institutional bases for this: inadequate grievance practices, poor communications systems, and constricted durable solutions policymaking. The analysis is based on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana (March–April 2006; September 2007–August 2008; June–July 2011) and research in the online archives of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).