A flight carrying eight men who had been held for weeks on a U.S. military base in Djibouti landed in South Sudan just before midnight Friday, officials said, bringing an end to a six-week legal battle that was resolved by an emergency intervention by the Supreme Court.
The U.S. military plane took off around 8:30 p.m. Eastern time, according to Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security spokeswoman. A picture shared by Homeland Security showed the men apparently aboard the airplane, handcuffed and shackled at their ankles, surrounded by uniformed personnel.
It remains unclear whether South Sudan’s government in Juba has detained the men, or what their ultimate fate might be. The 13-year-old country is on the brink of a civil war; the State Department has warned against travel there because of the risk of “crime, kidnapping and armed conflict.” In court 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 at least temporarily.
The flight marks the end of a saga in which the eight men had been shackled for weeks inside an air-conditioned shipping container on a U.S. military base in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. 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. All had been convicted of serious crimes in the United States, though many had either finished or were about to finish serving their sentences.
At issue in the lengthy legal battle was how much due process the government needs to provide to migrants before deporting them to so-called “third-countries,” places other than where they are from, and where they might be at risk of torture. Federal law places limits on deportations to places where migrants’ “life or freedom would be threatened.” The principle that migrants should not be deported to places where they would be at risk of torture or persecution is enshrined in international law.
The Supreme Court twice weighed in, each time agreeing that the Trump administration could send the men to South Sudan.
On Friday, Judge Brian E. Murphy of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts found that those rulings also applied to a new lawsuit the men filed as a last-ditch effort to prevent their removal, finding that the new lawsuit raised “substantially similar claims” to their old one. The new suit argued that deportation to South Sudan would be “impermissibly punitive” under an 1896 Supreme Court precedent that bars summarily deporting migrants to places where they will experience an “infamous punishment.”
Ms. McLaughlin, the Homeland Security spokeswoman, on Friday applauded the courts’ decision to stand down so the transfers to South Sudan could move forward. “A district judge cannot dictate the national security and foreign policy of the United States of America,” she said.
Trina Realmuto, one of the lawyers representing the migrants, criticized the high court’s action. “The Supreme Court is removing checks on the executive’s power by turning a blind eye to the Trump administration’s utter disregard for judicial orders,” she said.
The flight to South Sudan concludes a lengthy legal tussle between the migrants’ lawyers and 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. Stephen Miller, President Trump’s deputy chief of staff, has 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 torture in South Sudan.
The White House called him a “far-left activist.”
At a hearing earlier on Friday, Judge Randolph D. Moss of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia sounded open to the migrants’ new legal claims. 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.
But after ordering the government to briefly pause its deportation plans, he sent the case back to the court in Massachusetts, where Judge Murphy had the final word.
The migrants’ lawyers have contended that if they are sent to South Sudan, they will probably be subjected to torture. The U.S. government has said in its own filings that the South Sudanese government has given diplomatic assurances that this will not happen.
In May, Judge Murphy said he believed that the administration had violated one of his orders by giving the men less than 24 hours’ notice before first trying to send them 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.
The eight migrants now heading to South Sudan are part of a class-action lawsuit before Judge Murphy about the legality of deporting migrants to so-called third countries, where they have no ties and where they could be at risk of harm. The lawsuit is still continuing. While the Supreme Court lifted Judge Murphy’s preliminary order requiring the government to give all deportees a “meaningful opportunity” to voice a reasonable fear of torture before being sent to a third country, there have been no final rulings on the merits of the case.
While the eight men in South Sudan are now almost certainly beyond the reach of U.S. courts, the case could potentially affect the due-process rights of thousands of other migrants should the administration seek to send them to third countries. The administration brought one of the original plaintiffs in the case, a man known as O.C.G., back from Guatemala after Judge Murphy found that his deportation to Mexico was in violation of one of his rulings and ordered that he be returned.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.
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