DHS is violating a court order to remove a group of detainees to South Sudan, lawyers told a federal judge on Tuesday.
Around one dozen people — including a person with a removal order to Myanmar and a person with a removal order to Vietnam — were loaded onto planes and sent to South Sudan on Tuesday, court filings say. The deportations are either currently in progress or have already taken place, lawyers for the group wrote.
The ruling that DHS is allegedly violating in this case is clear. Last month, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy for the District of Massachusetts ordered DHS to give individuals set to be removed to a country that is not their own written notice in a language they understand, and to offer them the chance to contest their removal. That included providing the detainees a window of at least 15 days in which they could challenge DHS’ efforts to remove them to a third country.
Attorneys in the case said in Tuesday’s filings that DHS did not do that when it allegedly removed people to South Sudan.
Per one declaration, an ICE official on Monday afternoon emailed an attorney for a man with a removal order to Myanmar. The email told the attorney his client would be removed to South Africa. Ten minutes later, according to the declaration, ICE told the lawyer that it wished to rescind its email. Then, around two hours later, the document says, ICE told the lawyer that his client would in fact be sent to South Sudan.
On Tuesday morning, the lawyer emailed the detention facility where his client had been held. An ICE officer replied that the client had been removed “this morning” to South Sudan.
In another case described in Tuesday’s court filings, lawyers attached an email from the wife of a person with a removal order to Vietnam. Per that account, ICE officials told detainees that they were to be sent to South Africa, before returning to correct themselves and tell the group of their true destination: South Sudan.
“I called my husband’s ICE officer and was told that he’s been ‘booked out’ but the officer didn’t know where he was sent,” the email reads.
Attorneys for the group say that the situation “blatantly defies” earlier court orders. It also comes after the Trump administration tried to remove a group of detainees to Libya in potential violation of the same order in the same case. Per the filing, the man with a removal order to Myanmar had been part of the group that was slated to be removed to Libya before the judge blocked that attempt from succeeding.
The allegations suggest that the Trump administration is taking another opportunity to flout the rule of law. It’s part of a campaign to stage high-profile removals of undocumented migrants, but also to flaunt the power of the executive branch over the last section of government that is still attempting to reign its powers in: the judiciary.
The status of the deportation flights is unclear. In a motion, attorneys ask the judge to bar the government from removing the detainees, and to order their return if they’ve already been sent to South Sudan.
These are war crimes.
“You see, judge, this is not a third country at all because South Sudan has granted them citizenship.”
Have we reached “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” yet?
I can see them pulling that shit, have they actually?
Earlier the government voided all visas for South Sudanese passport holders. Perhaps this is the quid pro quo for restoring them?
My kid knows someone who is from South Sudan, but fled before the South Sudanese state existed. I have no idea what passport she now holds or if she was at risk of being deported back to the place her family fled when she was a child. It was hard to explain to my kid that there is no system that ensures fairness in such situations.