The Trump administration’s plan to deport eight men, all convicted of serious crimes in the United States, to South Sudan appeared to finally be moving forward on Friday evening, after a federal judge rejected a second lawsuit that argued that the administration was using deportation to a dangerous place as an unconstitutional form of punishment.
The ruling, from Judge Brian E. Murphy of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, could mean the end of a saga that saw the eight men shackled for weeks inside an air-conditioned shipping container on a U.S. military base in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. On Friday, Judge Murphy found that two Supreme Court rulings in favor of the administration also applied to the new lawsuit, which raised “substantially similar claims.” He rejected the migrants’ request that he issue another order blocking their deportation.
During a court hearing on Friday, a Justice Department attorney said the flight that would take the men from Djibouti to South Sudan was scheduled for 7 p.m. Eastern time. On Thursday, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, called the detainees “sickos” and said they “will be in South Sudan by Independence Day.”
The transfers to South Sudan will mark a victory for the Trump administration, which has made harshness a hallmark of its immigration enforcement agenda and has publicly criticized those federal judges who have tried to rein it in. The White House has called Judge Murphy a “far-left activist.” Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s deputy chief of staff, accused Judge Murphy of engaging in a “judicial coup” for requiring that the men stay in U.S. custody and be given the chance to express a reasonable fear of being tortured in South Sudan.
A lawyer for the migrants faulted the Supreme Court, saying that its rulings meant that Judge Murphy could not properly consider their new claims. “It is deeply troubling that the Supreme Court’s procedural ruling prevented a court from addressing the real fact that these deportations are unconstitutionally punitive,” said the lawyer, Trina Realmuto.
At a hearing earlier on Friday, Judge Randolph D. Moss of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia sounded open to the possibility that the migrants’ new legal claims had merit. He said it was “self-evident that the United States government cannot take human beings and send them to circumstances in which their physical well-being is at risk” for the purposes of punishing them, or to deter other migrants from coming to the United States. After ordering the government to briefly pause its deportation plans, he sent the case back to the court in Massachusetts.
Before coming to the United States, the men hailed from Vietnam, Mexico, Laos, Cuba and Myanmar. Just one is from South Sudan, a violence-plagued country. The migrants’ lawyers have contended that if they are sent there, they will probably be subjected to torture. The U.S. government has claimed in its own filings that the South Sudanese government has given diplomatic assurances that this will not happen.
It remains unclear what South Sudan has planned for the migrants after their arrival. During the hearing on Friday, a Justice Department lawyer read from a diplomatic note that said South Sudan would give the men immigration status to allow them to remain there temporarily.
In May, Judge Murphy had said he believed that the administration had violated one of his orders by giving the men less than 24 hours’ notice before putting them on a plane to South Sudan. In other cases, the Supreme Court has been skeptical of the Trump administration’s approach to due process, particularly its use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans who it claims are gang members. But in this case, the justices effectively overruled a district court judge who had ordered the administration to slow down in order to consider the detainees’ legal claims.
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