A federal judge has ruled the US government’s attempt to deport migrants to South Sudan “unquestionably” violated an earlier court order.
Brian E Murphy, the US district judge in Massachusetts, made the remark at an emergency hearing he had ordered in Boston following the Trump administration’s apparent removal of eight people to South Sudan, despite most of them being from other countries.
On Tuesday, Murphy ruled that the Trump administration could not let a group of migrants being transported to countries that were not their own leave the custody of US immigration authorities.
Lawyers for seven men – including Burmese, Laotian, Mexican and Cuban nationals – deported on Tuesday were told that their clients were given little more than 24 hours notice that they were being expelled from the US. Murphy, the judge, said that little amount of time was “plainly insufficient”.
An eighth man in the group was a citizen of South Sudan, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Jonathan Ryan, a lawyer for Burmese man known in court documents as NM, who was expelled, said he initially received notice that his client was being sent to Libya, before being informed that client was actually being sent to South Africa. About two hours after the second notice, Ryan was told his client was being sent to South Sudan.
“I’ve never in 20 years seen anything close to this happening,” said Ryan, who has been representing clients detained in Pearsall, Texas, since 2005.
Furthering the confusion, a lawyer for the Department of Justice first indicated that the Burmese deportee would ultimately be sent to Myanmar, but the government has not provided details about the final destination of the flight.
Murphy ordered the administration to clarify the facts of NM’s removal, including the moment that officials first decided it would be impractical or impossible to remove him to Burma, and the time and reasoning behind the reversal of that decision and determination that NM should be sent to Burma after all.
Ryan said his client was part of an ethnic minority in Myanmar, and faced immense risks if he were to be sent there. “Whether he’s sent to Burma or South Sudan, he is at risk of harm – of abuse, exploitation, death,” Ryan said.
“In fact, this is a death penalty case with traffic court-level procedure,” said Ryan. “Or rather, this procedure wouldn’t even fly in a traffic court.”
Burma is in the midst of a civil war, and recently experienced its worst earthquake disaster in more than a century. Meanwhile South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, has widely been described as being on the verge of descending into another episode of civil war.
Flight trackers and a report from the New York Times suggest that the flight carrying deportees in question may have stopped in Djibouti, not South Sudan.
“This is so opaque and obscure,” Ryan said, “I have no clarity.”
In an earlier briefing on Wednesday, a homeland security spokesperson acknowledged the deportation was occurring, but refused to say whether the final destination was South Sudan.
“We conducted a deportation flight from Texas to remove some of the most barbaric, violent individuals illegally in the United States. These are the monsters that the district judge is trying to protect,” the spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin, said.
McLaughlin went on to add: “It is absolutely absurd for a district judge to try to dictate the foreign policy and national security of the United States.”
“Because of safety and operational security, we cannot tell you what the final destination for these individuals will be,” she continued.
Federal immigration officials said the people were originally from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam and South Sudan, but that their home countries refused to accept them as deportations. Homeland security officials claimed that they had been convicted of murder, armed robbery and other serious crimes.
Last month, Murphy had issued an injunction that required any people being removed to a third country to receive due process. After reports of the apparent South Sudan flight, the judge told Elianis Perez, a justice department lawyer: “I have a strong indication that my preliminary injunction order has been violated.”
In an email to his lawyer, the spouse of a Vietnamese man believed to have been sent to South Sudan wrote: “Please help! … They cannot be allowed to do this.”
South Sudan’s police spokesperson, Maj Gen James Enoka, told the Associated Press on Wednesday that no migrants had arrived.
Enoka said that if they did, they would be investigated and those found not to be from the country would be “re-deported to their correct country”.
Immigration lawyers have accused the Trump administration of violating Murphy’s order several times in the past month, including in the case of a planned flight of Laotian, Vietnamese and Filipino immigrants to Libya and the expulsion of a Guatemalan man to Mexico.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Murphy also chastised government lawyers for their handling of the case of the Guatemalan man, known as OCG. Lawyers initially said in a sworn declaration that OCG had been informed he was being sent to Mexico and confirmed that he was not afraid to go there, but the justice department later said the declaration was erroneous, and it could not confirm that OCG had been informed he was being sent to Mexico.
“This is a really big deal,” Murphy said. “It’s a big deal to lie to a court under oath.”
Following the hearing, Murphy issued a clarification to his prior preliminary injunction in which he said any removals of immigrants to third countries should be preceded by a formal notice, and individuals much have at least 10 days to evaluate and contest the removal.
