Mass. judge denies eight migrants’ request to halt South Sudan deportation

Eight migrants were denied a request by a Massachusetts federal judge on Friday to have their deportation to South Sudan halted.

Justice Department lawyers said the men were scheduled to be flown to South Sudan on Friday at 7:00 pm ET after two courts considered their emergency request on July 4, a day when courts would otherwise be closed, Reuters reported. 

The migrants, who are from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Burma, Sudan and Vietnam, filed new claims on Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court clarified that Boston federal Judge Brian Murphy couldn’t require the Department of Homeland Security to hold them.

Also on Friday, federal Judge Randolph Moss in Washington paused the Trump administration’s efforts to deport the eight migrants to South Sudan, the latest case testing the legality of the Trump administration’s push to ship illegal immigrants to third countries. 

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Moss had briefly halted the deportation after lawyers for the migrants filed the new claims in his court and sent the case to Boston, where Murphy denied the claim.  

The eight men argued their deportations to South Sudan would violate the Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and unusual” punishment, Reuters reported. They have been convicted of various crimes, with four of them convicted of murder, the Department of Homeland Security has said.

They were detained for six weeks on a military base in Djibouti instead of being brought back to the United States.

On Thursday, the migrants filed new claims after the Supreme Court said that a federal judge in Boston could no longer require the Department of Homeland Security to hold them, Reuters reported. 

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Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House. 

During Friday’s hearing with Moss, a government lawyer argued that court orders halting agreed-upon deportations pose a serious problem for U.S. diplomatic relations and would make foreign countries less likely to accept transfers of migrants in the future.

The case is the latest development over the legality of the Trump administration’s campaign to deter immigration by shipping migrants to locations other than their countries of origin pursuant to deals with other countries, according to Reuters. 

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“It seems to me almost self-evident that the United States government cannot take human beings and send them to circumstances in which their physical well-being is at risk simply either to punish them or send a signal to others,” Moss said during the hearing.