A federal judge has ruled that the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to deport migrants to South Sudan was “unquestionably violative” of an injunction he had issued earlier.
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 deportation 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 deported to South Sudan leave the custody of US immigration authorities.
In his order, Murphy wrote: “While the court leaves the practicalities of compliance to defendants’ discretion … the court expects that class members will be treated humanely.”
Last month, Murphy had issued an injunction that required any people being deported 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.”
At the beginning of Wednesday’s hearing, Perez declined to say where the plane carrying the migrants landed, citing “very serious operational and safety concerns”.
Perez also disputed Murphy’s finding that the migrants were not afforded the opportunity to challenge their deportations, Reuters reports.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Murphy said that he would leave the discussion of criminal penalties against the homeland security department for another day.
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, a highly unstable country that has widely been described as on the verge of descending into another episode of civil war.
“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.
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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.
On 18 April Murphy issued a preliminary injunction that was designed to ensure that any migrants being deported to a third country were provided due process under the US constitution’s fifth amendment, in addition to a “meaningful opportunity” to raise any safety concerns.
In an email to his lawyer, the spouse of a Vietnamese man believed to have been deported 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”.
