Immigration lawyers told a federal judge on Tuesday that they received information indicating the U.S. government may have put migrants from countries like Myanmar and Vietnam on a deportation flight to South Sudan, an eastern African nation plagued by conflict and political instability.
In an emergency filing to the federal district court in Massachusetts, the attorneys said the reported deportation flight to South Sudan would directly violate an ruling issued by U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy that barred the Trump administration from deporting migrants to third countries without affording them certain due process rights.
The lawyers said any migrant deported to South Sudan “faces a strong likelihood of irreparable harm,” citing reports documenting widespread violence, human rights violations and conflict in the landlocked African country, the world’s youngest nation.
Soon after its independence in 2011, South Sudan endured a bloody civil war — and fears of a new conflict have recently surfaced. The U.S. State Department has a Level 4 travel advisory for South Sudan, warning Americans not to travel there due to “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict.”
The emergency motion asked Murphy to prohibit deportations of third country deportees to South Sudan, and to order the return of those deported there, if the removals had already occurred.
Late on Tuesday, Murphy ordered the Trump administration to “maintain custody and control” of the migrants reportedly being sent to South Sudan or another third country, to ensure they can return to the U.S. if he finds their deportation to be unlawful. He instructed government lawyers to be ready to provide certain information during a hearing scheduled for Wednesday, including the names of the deportees and details on what level of due process they received.
The U.S. government has not publicly confirmed an arrangement to deport migrants who are not from South Sudan to that country. Representatives for the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Trump administration has been mounting an aggressive diplomatic campaign to convince nations around the world to accept migrants who are not their own citizens, approaching far-flung nations like Libya and Rwanda to take in third country deportees. It has already deported African and Asian migrants to Costa Rica and Panama, and Venezuelan deportees to El Salvador.
Earlier this month, CBS News and other outlets reported the administration had made plans to send migrants to Libya, but that flight never materialized once those reports surfaced.
In April, Murphy, the federal judge in Massachusetts, barred the government from deporting migrants to third countries, unless it first provided them and their lawyers notice of the destination and a chance to contest their deportation.
In their filing on Tuesday, the group of immigration lawyers said the government appeared to have violated that order in the case of two migrants from Myanmar and Vietnam.
Emails submitted by the lawyers show that an attorney for the man from Myanmar was sent a notice on Monday indicating that his client had been told he would be deported to South Africa. The attorney was then sent another email, indicating that his client was actually facing deportation to South Sudan, the emails show.
On Tuesday morning, another lawyer helping the man from Myanmar emailed the immigration detention center in Los Fresnos, Texas, where he was being held, asking about his whereabouts. She was told her client had been deported in the morning. When she asked where, she received an email saying, “South Sudan.”
The lawyers said they also received an email from a woman who said she believed her husband, a man from Vietnam, had been deported to South Sudan, alongside other migrant detainees held at the Los Fresnos detention facility.
Camilo Montoya-Galvez is the immigration reporter at CBS News. Based in Washington, he covers immigration policy and politics.
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