US removes eight people convicted of crimes amid South Sudan reports
Immigration rights lawyers have said the deportations violated a court order against sending people to countries other than their homelands.
A federal judge has ordered US officials to appear at an emergency hearing to answer questions about their apparent deportation of immigrants to South Sudan and other countries.
Shortly before the hearing began, the Trump administration confirmed it had deported eight people it said had been convicted of crimes in the United States, but the government refused to say what their final destinations would be.
The Department of Homeland Security said the migrants’ home countries could not receive them. It did not elaborate.
President Donald Trump and Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem “are working every single day to get these vicious criminals off of American streets — and while activist judges are on the other side, fighting to get them back onto the United States soil,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a department spokesperson.
She showed reporters photographs of the deportees and described them as “the monsters” that US District Judge Brian E Murphy in Massachusetts “is trying to protect”.
Immigration rights lawyers have said the deportations violated a court order against sending people to countries other than their homelands without first allowing them to argue the removal could put them in danger.
Mr Murphy ruled on Tuesday that Mr Trump’s administration must retain custody and control of those “currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country, to ensure the practical feasibility of return” if he finds such removals were unlawful.
Lawyers for immigrants said the Republican administration appears to have begun deporting people from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan despite a court order restricting removals to other countries.
The judge left the details to the government’s discretion, but said he expects the migrants “will be treated humanely”.
Attorneys for the migrants told the judge that immigration authorities may have sent as many as a dozen people from several countries to Africa.
The lawyers say that violates a court order that people have a “meaningful opportunity” to argue that sending them to a country outside their homeland would threaten their safety.
The apparent removal of one man from Myanmar was confirmed in an email from an immigration official in Texas, according to court documents.
He was informed only in English, a language he does not speak well, and his lawyers learned of the plan hours before his deportation flight, they said.
A woman also reported that her husband from Vietnam and up to 10 other people were flown to Africa on Tuesday morning, attorneys from the National Immigration Litigation Alliance wrote.
The lawyers asked Mr Murphy for an emergency court order to prevent the deportations.
Mr Murphy, who was nominated by Democratic president Joe Biden, previously found that any plans to deport people to Libya without notice would “clearly” violate his ruling, which also applies to people who have otherwise exhausted their legal appeals.
Mr Murphy summoned US officials to court to identify the migrants impacted, address when and how they learned they would be removed to a third country and what opportunity they were given to raise a fear-based claim.
He also ruled that the government must provide information about the whereabouts of the migrants apparently already removed.
The Department of Homeland Security and the White House did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
South Sudan’s police spokesperson Major General James Monday Enoka told The Associated Press on Wednesday that no migrants had arrived in the country and that if they do, they would be investigated and again “redeported to their correct country” if found not to be South Sudanese.
Some countries do not accept deportations from the United States. That has led the administration to strike agreements with other countries, including Panama, to house them.
The US has sent Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law, an action being contested in the courts.
South Sudan has endured repeated waves of violence since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011 amid hopes it could use its large oil reserves to bring prosperity to a region long battered by poverty.
Just weeks ago, the country’s top UN official warned that fighting between forces loyal to the president and a vice president threatened to spiral again into full-scale civil war.
