The White House disagrees with the federal judge’s ruling
Immigration attorneys in South Sudan are not allowed to return to their home countries without due process: a U.S. immigration attorney says the case for a Vietnamese client had been lied to before being deported
A federal judge on Wednesday said the Trump administration violated his court order to not deport migrants to countries where they have no ties without giving them sufficient due process to contest their removals.
Murphy, the federal judge, said the situation of the people sent on the plane shows that it’s “impossible” that they had a meaningful opportunity to object to their deportations, since they only had a few hours late at night to contest their removal and weren’t able to consult with their attorneys.
The department’s actions are in violation of this court’s order. Murphy said that it is a question of if the violation implicates criminal obstruction. “Based on what I know, I don’t think anyone could say that those individuals had a meaningful opportunity to object.”
The court hearing in Boston continued on Wednesday with the federal judge unsure about the fate of at least seven men.
Other countries such as El Salvador and Mexico have served as these third country destinations for migrants who cannot be sent back to their home countries, as the U.S. seeks more destinations for people it wants to deport from the U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons told reporters earlier on Wednesday that the people on the flight out of the U.S. had been convicted of crimes in the United States and that ICE was not able to return them to their home countries.
There were Asian men on the flight and they were taken into custody by a country that was willing to take them in. A judge in Massachusetts is trying to force the United States to bring back some barbaric monsters who pose a threat to the safety of the American people.
Murphy’s order came after immigration lawyers filed an emergency motion on Tuesday, saying their Vietnamese client was given little notice before being put on a plane to South Sudan, one of the world’s poorest and most politically unstable countries.
Jonathan Ryan is a lawyer with Advokato, a legal nonprofit, and told NPR that what was striking was the complete lack of information the group is working with. Ryan doesn’t know his client’s name or criminal history, but he knows his name is N.M and he went to South Sudan.
On May 16, they spoke briefly, but N.M. doesn’t speak English. Ryan had a client that had been moved to a facility further away after he began looking for an interpreter. In a second phone call, despite background noise and his client’s broken English, he was able to discern that his client had been given paperwork, which he’d refused to sign.
“No meaningful opportunity at all was provided to him to express a fear of being sent to South Sudan,” Ryan said. “And let’s be honest, it’s quite possible that my client has never heard of South Sudan.”
The government said that he would be sent to Burma first before he was sent to two other countries.
I would like to speak with my client. I want him to tell me that he is in Burma,” Ryan said. “Because I don’t know. The guard in South Sudan told him that he was in the U.S. and that he was in Burma, which is a possibility of the United States. We have no idea what’s happening.
Government lawyers at Wednesday’s court hearing said people sent on the flight could have expressed fear of being sent to another country before they were loaded on the plane, but didn’t.
Elianis Perez is an immigration lawyer at the Justice Department. I think there might have been a misunderstanding because the court’s preliminary injunction wasn’t specific enough.
The government believes that they complied with my order because they do not know any of the people who yelled to their jailers that they were afraid to go to South Sudan. That is plainly insufficient,” Murphy said during Wednesday’s hearing.
The men in this case only got 17 hours notice, which is insufficient, so he said he would clarify his initial injunction to define how much notice is enough. The Justice Department insists that only 24 hours is sufficient, while the plaintiffs’ lawyers argue that 30 days is enough.
Murphy ordered the department to keep migrants in custody until he could verify they were given proper due process.
Lawyers for the men asked that they be brought back to the U.S., but Drew Ensign, a Department of Justice attorney, asked that DHS officials be allowed to interview them about their fear of persecution of being sent to another country while they remain in U.S. custody abroad.
A request for comment about where a plane full of migrants was sent was not immediately responded to by the State Department.
The spokesman denied any arrival of flights of deportees from the U.S. by Wednesday evening local time. He said any non-South Sudanese migrants arriving in the country would be re-deported to their correct country of origin.
South Sudan is not the only country to oppose being a so-called third country. Earlier this month, Libyan officials also rejected reports that they would take in deportees from the U.S. if they were not Libyan nationals.
Deportations of High-profile Immigrants to a Third Country: Questions about the U.S. Judiciary Power
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Questions about U.S. authority over migrants deported to other countries have arisen in several other high-profile immigration cases, raising questions about the limits of judicial authority.
Murphy did not rule out holding the Trump administration in contempt of court for violating his initial order, but said that would be left for a later time.
To assess whether the deportees are entitled to remain in the U.S., the Government needs to give them “reasonable fear” interviews, in which they must state why they should not be deported. If they express a fear, they must get at least two weeks to contest their deportation to a third country.
During a briefing earlier today, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the deported immigrants will stay in Djibouti for two weeks. She accused Murphy of damaging America’s national security. Federal officials in Africa are being forced to remain in the country for more than two weeks with criminals and illegal immigrants threatening our diplomatic relationships with countries around the world.
The White House says the migrants are violent criminals. According to D.H.S documents the men had been convicted of crimes including murder, sexual assault, kidnapping and robbery.
In order to comply with a federal court order, the White House told the eight immigrants that they would stay in East African country of Djibouti for at least two weeks.
US immigration attorneys in South Sudan are not allowed to return to their home countries without due process, a US judge said. This comes after eight immigrants were sent on a flight to South Sudan without notice or opportunity to contest their removal. A US immigration attorney said the case for a Vietnamese client had been lied to before being deported.