On Tuesday evening, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to maintain guard of immigrants who, according to lawyers, were withdrawn from a Texas detention center and sent suddenly to Sudan in South-Sud.
The American district judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts ordered the administration to keep individuals in the care of immigration officials so that they could be returned if the court determined that their expulsion was illegal.
“While the court leaves the practical aspects of the discretion of the defendants,” wrote Murphy, referring to the Department of Homeland Security, the Kristi Noem internal Secretary and the Attorney General Pam Bondi, “the court expects the members of the class to be treated humanically”.
Murphy said government lawyers should be prepared at a Wednesday hearing scheduled for detailing the move of immigrants and explaining whether the prisoners were informed and had the opportunity to challenge the expulsion in a third country according to the fear of their security.
The order responded to an emergency request asking Murphy to intervene after the lawyers learned that two Asian immigrants held in Texas, as well as nine others, had been sent to South Sudan.
According to lawyers, men, one of myanmar and the other of Vietnam, were notified Monday by officers of the Port Isabel detention center in Los Fresnos, Texas, they are returned to South Africa. The men refused to sign the order, according to the judicial archives. The police quickly canceled, to return with another prescription saying that they would be sent back to South Sudan. Again, men have not signed. The next morning, their lawyers and family members could not locate them, according to court documents.
Murphy had already ordered the administration to stop all the referral to a third country after trying to expel a group of 13 men in Libya earlier this month. At the time, Murphy warned that the administration would violate an order from the previous court that civil servants should provide prisoners with regular procedures,, Including the reception of moves in their own language and having the possibility of asserting that sending them outside their country of origin could threaten their security.
The Ministry of Internal Security did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Jacqueline Brown, who represents the Burmese man, identified in court documents like NM, wrote that his client had been part of the group which was to be expelled in Libya, before its judgment. She had an appointment with NM at 9 a.m. on Tuesday, but when she checked the detainee locator to find him, he left. She wrote an immigration agent asking NM and he was told that he was sent back to South Sudan this morning.
The African Center-East country is engulfed in armed conflicts and the third largest refugee crisis in the world, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In 2023, 2.3 million people had fled to neighboring countries and 2.2 million were moved internally.
“The armed conflict between various political and ethnic groups continues throughout the country,” said the US State Department in an opinion not to go to the country, noting that kidnapping, road ambushes, armed robbery, murder and home invasion “are omnipresent”.
The Burmese man, who spoke of the regional language of Karen, had the final order to be withdrawn from Nebraska, which houses around 8,000 myanmar refugees, who is governed by a military dictatorship. Many refugees come from the ethnic minority of Karen who escaped the long civil war.
The Vietnamese had signed orders to be expelled in Vietnam, according to his spouse. He was detained with 10 other immigrants – Laos, Thailand, Pakistan, Korea and Mexico – who was moved with him, said the lawyer for the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project lawyer.
“Please help!” The man’s spouse said. “They cannot be allowed to do so, this is not the first and will not be the last if they continue to get away with it. I beg your help. ”
“The detention centers are overcrowded with inhuman conditions and the ice sends people wherever they can fight overcrowding. It’s not fair”, “,”
