The Trump administration deported two Asian immigrants held in detention in Texas to the conflict-ridden country of South Sudan, defying court orders, according to their attorneys.
The men, one from Myanmar and the other from Vietnam, were given notice on Monday by officers at the Port Isabel Detention Center in Los Fresnos, Texas, they would be removed to South Africa. The men refused to sign the order, according to court records. The officers quickly rescinded, only to come back with another order saying they would be removed to South Sudan. Again, the men didn’t sign. The next morning their lawyers and family members couldn’t locate them, according to court documents.
The accounts came from court filings in an emergency motion to U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts asking immigration authorities to return the men. Murphy had already ordered the administration to halt any removal to any third country after it attempted to deport a group of 13 men to Libya earlier this month. At the time, Murphy warned that the administration would violate a previous court order that officials must provide detainees with due process, including receiving notice of the removals in their own language and getting the opportunity to argue that sending them outside their home country could threaten their safety.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jacqueline Brown, who represents the Burmese man, identified in court documents as N.M., wrote that her client had been part of the group that was to be deported to Libya, before it was stopped. She had an appointment with N.M. at 9 a.m. Tuesday, but when she checked the detainee locator service to find him, he was gone. She wrote an immigration officer asking for N.M.’s whereabouts and was told he had been removed this morning to South Sudan.
The east-central African country is engulfed in armed conflict and the world’s third largest refugee crisis, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. As of 2023, 2.3 million people had fled to neighboring countries and 2.2 million were displaced internally.
“Armed conflict between various political and ethnic groups continues throughout the country,” the U.S. State Department says in an advisory not to travel to the country, noting that kidnapping, road ambushes, armed robbery, murder and home invasion “are pervasive.”
The Burmese man, who spoke the regional language of Karen, had final orders to be removed from Nebraska, home to about 8,000 refugees from Myanmar, which is ruled by a military dictatorship. Many of the refugees are from the Karen ethnic minority who escaped the long-running civil war.
The Vietnamese man had signed orders to be deported back to Vietnam, according to his spouse. He was held with 10 other immigrants — from Laos, Thailand, Pakistan, Korea and Mexico — who were removed with him, the spouse told lawyers at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project.
“Please help!” the man’s spouse said. “They cannot be allowed to do this, this is not the first and won’t be the last if they keep getting away with this. I am begging for your assistance.”
“The detention centers are overcrowded with inhumane conditions and ICE is sending people anywhere they can to combat overcrowding. This is not right,”
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