A group of immigration officers are stuck in a small east African country, plagued by smog from burn pits with human waste, at risk of malaria, and taking a dozen medications to battle chronic respiratory illness.
Those 11 agents are working 12-hour shifts to guard a handful of detainees who were set to be deported to war-torn South Sudan before a judge stepped in to block their removal, citing due process violations.
But the judge didn’t force Donald Trump’s administration to offload those immigrants in Djibouti.
Lawyers for the government had even requested that they land there. Massachusetts District Judge Brian Murphy granted their request to hold those deportees overseas, in U.S. custody, to give them a chance to receive a “reasonable fear interview” to explain how they would face persecution or torture if they were sent to South Sudan.
The Trump administration, which had requested permission to hold deportees in Djibouti, is now accusing Judge Murphy of “stranding” ICE agents there.
“This is reprehensible and, quite frankly, pathological,” Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.
Homeland Security accused Murphy of “putting the health and safety of law enforcement officers at risk for the sake of criminals.”
In a court filing on Thursday, a top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official detailed the conditions officers are facing.
Eight immigrants are sleeping in a conference room in a converted shipping container at Camp Lemonnier, a U.S. military base in Djibouti.
The officers share “very limited sleeping quarters” in a trailer with three sets of bunk beds and six beds in total, according to the declaration from Mellissa B. Harper, acting deputy executive associate director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations.
ICE’s reliance on Department of Defense resources are “causing disruption to the station’s operations and consuming critical resources intended for service members,” according to Harper.
The agents also have an “unknown degree of exposure” to malaria “despite taking the antimalarial as full efficacy of the medication is unknown currently,” she wrote.
The use of burn pits to dispose of human waste and garbage, five miles from the base, creates a “smog cloud” that is “making it difficult to breathe and requiring medical treatment for the officers, who have experienced throat irritation,” Harper wrote.
Officers began to feel ill within 72 hours of landing in Djibouti last month and “continue to feel ill with symptoms such as coughing, difficulty breathing, fever, and achy joint,” symptoms that “align with bacterial upper respiratory infection,” she added.
Defense officials also warned agents they face “imminent danger of rocket attacks from terrorist groups in Yemen,” but the officers don’t have body armor or other gear to protect them, Harper said.
Last week, Judge Murphy accused the administration of “manufacturing chaos” in the case.
He had previously warned that administration officials could face contempt charges after violating his weeks-old court order against summary removals of immigrants without “meaningful” notice before they are sent to countries where they could face violence or death.
He then allowed the government — by its own request — to hold those deportees overseas.
But government attorneys have now “changed their tune,” he wrote last week. “It turns out that having immigration proceedings on another continent is harder and more logistically cumbersome” than the administration anticipated, he said.
Murphy, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, has faced a barrage of attacks from the White House, which labeled him a “far-left activist” who is trying to “protect the violent criminal illegal immigrants.” Trump called him “absolutely out of control” and accused him of “hurting our country.”
In court filings, Murphy said he had restrained himself by not ordering the government to “simply return” the men so they can receive due process in the United States.
“Instead, the Court accepted Defendants’ own suggestion that they be allowed to keep the individuals out of the country and finish their process abroad,” he wrote.
“To be clear, the Court recognizes that the class members at issue here have criminal histories. But that does not change due process,” Murphy added. “The Court treats its obligation to these principles with the seriousness that anyone committed to the rule of law should understand.”
The class-action case in Murphy’s court — involving several deportees challenging their removal from the country — is among several high-profile immigration cases playing out in courtrooms across the country.
Administration officials have asked the Supreme Court to overrule Murphy and continue deporting people to South Sudan.
