The migrant family thrown onto a plane for deportation but then immediately returned back to the U.S. after a judge threatened to hold Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III in contempt of court said they were left in the dark about what was happening to them. “I spent the entire ride to my home country worried about what would happen to my daughter and me once we landed,” mom “Carmen” said.
Carmen and her child had been waiting for their case to play out in immigration court, when they were ushered out of a family detention facility in the early morning to be sent back to El Salvador, despite the Department of Justice (DOJ) having agreed “to delay deportation hearings for Carmen until midnight on Thursday so her lawyers could appeal her removal orders in court,” Vox reported last week.
Learning of their imminent deportation, an infuriated U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan threatened to hold Sessions and other administration officials in contempt unless the plane was turned back. “Someone in the government made a decision to remove those plaintiffs and I’m not happy at all about that,” he said. “And if they aren’t brought back forthwith, I’m going to issue orders to show cause why people should not be held in contempt of court, and I’m going to start with the attorney general.”
During that time, Carmen, part of an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit challenging Sessions’s move making asylum claims just about impossible for victims of domestic and gang violence, sat on a plane in horror. “Carmen's attorneys have said she has been raped and stalked by her husband who has threatened her and preyed upon by gangs in her home country,” NBC News reports.
It was only when the plane landed that she found out what was happening back in Judge Sullivan’s courtroom, when an official from the flight told them they would be coming back. “When he told me that I could return to the United States, I was so happy,” she said. “To keep fighting for my case and for my daughter.”
Meanwhile, “immigration officials blamed her deportation on a data error and confusion over why her deportation had been delayed.” Sure, Jan. Or perhaps it’s deportation-happy officials who have shown themselves perfectly willing to mislead or coerce parents into agreeing to be deported without their kids, as Sessions has been accused of removing cases from an immigration judge—under his jurisdiction as attorney general—“apparently because he was too slow to issue deportation orders.”
What we also know is that Sessions and his mass deportation thugs apparently ignored their own department’s instructions and tried to deport an asylum-seeking mom and kids to possible death, and a judge threatened to hold them in contempt of court for it.