A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration must keep custody of illegal immigrants who lawyers said may have been unlawfully deported to South Sudan instead of their native countries.
The order comes after attorneys from the National Immigration Litigation Alliance made an emergency submission to U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy that accused the Trump administration of flying up to a dozen illegal immigrants in the United States who were originally from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan, a country plagued by political instability.
The lawyers accused the White House of being out of line due to Murphy’s previous court order in April saying migrants must receive a “meaningful opportunity” to argue that sending them to a country outside their home country would threaten their safety.
Murphy handed down a decision Tuesday confirming that the government must “maintain custody and control of class members currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country, to ensure the practical feasibility of return if the Court finds that such removals were unlawful.”
While stopping short of ordering the plane to turn around. Murphy said the Department of Homeland Security must keep the illegal immigrants allegedly flown to South Sudan in their custody as the case plays out in court.
“I’m not going to limit DHS on where they hold them,” the Massachusetts judge said. “If they want to turn the plane around, they can.”
Officials must appear in court Wednesday to provide further information about the migrants deported and whether they were given an opportunity to argue that sending them to a country outside their homeland would pose a meaningful threat to their safety, Murphy added.
“I have a strong indication that my preliminary injunction order has been violated,” Murphy told Elianis Perez, a lawyer with the Department of Justice.
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Perez said that one of the illegal immigrants flown to South Sudan had been convicted of murder. At least one rapist was also on the flight, according to a DHS attorney.
Murphy’s order on Tuesday strikes yet another blow to the Trump administration’s push to deport illegal immigrants to third-party countries, including other African countries and Ukraine.
