South Sudan. Well, maybe.
As of midday Wednesday, we might be sending people to Djibouti instead. Or in addition to. It’s tough to say.
After multiple emergency hearings to sort out who got sent where and when, it still isn’t 100% clear where the Trump administration sent eight immigrants. One thing is clear, however: The judge overseeing the case is less than thrilled with the administration.
We all learned about the administration’s latest attempt to secretly remove migrants Tuesday evening, when lawyers for eight migrants filed an emergency motion to stop the government—specifically, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi—from deporting their clients to South Sudan. They had learned that one detainee, a Burmese national with limited English proficiency, was provided a notice of removal to South Sudan—in English only. He refused to sign and was removed the next morning.
After a hearing late Tuesday night, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy ordered the administration to maintain custody of the migrants until a subsequent hearing about whether the removal violated an earlier court order. (Spoiler alert: It totally violated an earlier court order.)
During that hearing, Department of Justice lawyers refused to say where the deportation plane was or where it was landing.
Attorney General Pam Bondi’s Department of Justice refuses to answer questions from the courts.
The administration has tried this tactic in other cases, such as trying to claim the state secrets privilege in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. The DOJ told U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis that giving her any details about returning Abrego Garcia would jeopardize national security. Xinis was not impressed by this argument.
The DOJ kept this up throughout a multi-hour hearing on Wednesday in front of Murphy, which means we still don’t know where these migrants were sent. The New York Times reported that the obligatory “people familiar with the matter” believe the men were actually sent to Djibouti.
The fact that South Sudan was even an option for removal is absurd, given that the U.S. State Department’s take on South Sudan is that Americans should not travel there because of crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict.
Just last week, The New York Times reported that the country’s vice president has been detained at his residence for months, and the country is on the verge of a civil war that threatens to destabilize the entire region.
And just two weeks ago, Noem extended the Temporary Protected Status designation for South Sudanese refugees because it is not possible for them to safely return.
The Trump administration is continuing to insist that these migrants are uniquely dangerous, with a DHS spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, telling reporters that “no country on earth wanted to accept them because their crimes were so uniquely barbaric.”
Show your work, Tricia. If these are the worst criminals in the world, surely you can easily prove that.
McLaughlin also complained about “activist judges” being “on the other side, fighting to get them back onto the United States soil.” Stupid judges, always forcing everyone to care about stupid things like stupid due process.
Additionally, even if these were indeed the world’s worst criminals, Murphy’s prior order still required the government to give at least 15 days' notice to any migrant being removed to a country they were not from.
During the Wednesday hearing, DOJ lawyers tried to insist that it was totally cool and fine that they gave detainees less than 24 hours’ notice instead, because the detainees hadn’t expressed a fear of removal.
Murphy is exceedingly unhappy and held that the administration “unquestionably” violated his court order by putting detainees on a flight to South Sudan … or wherever they actually ended up. He hasn’t yet ruled on whether to impose criminal contempt sanctions on the various hobgoblins in the Trump administration responsible for this behavior.
Nothing will stop until judges start making this behavior very painful for the government. In the face of near-unanimous rulings from the courts to stop trying to send migrants to random war-torn strongman-led countries in secret, the administration has instead doubled down.
It doesn’t matter if it is Libya or El Salvador or South Sudan or Djibouti or Narnia or Atlantis. The courts have made very clear that detainees must be given a meaningful opportunity to challenge their removal. The administration knows this, but they just don’t care. And they’re not going to care until judges impose meaningful consequences. Bring the hammer down, Judge Murphy.
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