Judge rules Trump administration attempt to deport migrants to South Sudan violates earlier order

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, Murphyruled that the Trump administration could not let a group of migrants being deported to South Sudan leave the custody of US immigration authorities.

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.”

In an earlier briefing on Wednesday, a homeland security spokesperson acknowledged the deportation was occurring, but refused to say whether the 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.

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.”