Judge: South Sudan (Or ???) Deportation Flight Violated F*ck Out Of Court Order
Constitutional crisis? You're soaking in it!
A federal judge in Massachusetts said Wednesday that the Trump administration was “unquestionably in violation of this court’s order” when it tried to deport eight detainees to South Sudan on Tuesday, because the men didn’t get an opportunity to challenge their removal to that country or any other third-country destination.
US District Judge Brian E. Murphy Found that, in violation of his April 18 order in a class action case, the feds hustled the men onto a deportation flight without due process, ignoring his order that anyone being deported to somewhere other than their home country must be informed of their destination and have the chance to say they fear being tortured or killed if sent there, as if the feds care about that, because as DHS spokescreep Tricia McLaughlin repeatedly said in a presser yesterday, the men were all “monsters,” and you don’t allow due process for monsters, do you?
Here’s video of that presser, which you should not watch if fascism makes you hurl. Note that McLaughlin and other DHS officials repeatedly lie about Judge Murphy, accusing him of wanting to return all the monsters because he loves monsters, when in fact Murphy made clear that the US can deport people, but only if it follows the goddamn Constitution.
Let’s be clear: Unlike the people Trump has disappeared to El Salvador under the phony pretext that they’re enemy combatants in our war with gangs, these were all people who were convicted of serious crimes in the US and completed their prison sentences. They might, as the government claims, be a danger to the public if released, but nobody is arguing they be released.
It’s normal for DHS to deport immigrant crimers after they finish their sentences, but in the case of these detainees, their home countries refused to accept them back. In such cases, it’s also legal to deport people who have standing deportation orders to a third country that agrees to take them. That’s all allowed as long as the deportees have due process, which they have had up until this week.
But the Trump administration is in a hurry, so the Constitution be damned, which is why this is happening, not because Murphy has a soft spot for crimers.
Much of Wednesday’s hearing took place under seal, since the government contends that the details of the deportations, including the country that agreed to take the men, are classified. But after hearing testimony from both sides in private, Murphy explained why the deportation flight wasn’t legal.
Instead of receiving adequate notice of their removal, the detainees, who were imprisoned in Texas, were only notified of their pending removal sometime Monday evening after the close of business hours, then driven to the airport at 9:30 local time Tuesday morning and loaded onto a chartered plane, giving them no time to actually contact an attorney or family members.
In a brief order issued after the hearing, Murphy wrote,
To be clear, this is not one of those hard cases. […] [The] non-citizens at issue had fewer than 24 hours’ notice, and zero business hours’ notice, before being put on a plane and sent to a country as to which the U.S. Department of State issues the following warning: “Do not travel to South Sudan due to crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict.” [Bold in original]
DHS still hasn’t said exactly where the men will be sent, or even where they are right now, but denied in yesterday’s presser that they were destined for South Sudan. In the hearing, an ICE official told Judge Murphy the men were “sitting on a plane.” That sounds very legal.
One of the deported migrants, Nyo Mint, may have actually been deported to his home country, Myanmar, but his attorney, Jonathan Ryan, says that
he is still in the dark about where his client was, and that he has been “disappeared.”
“I have not heard from my client,” Ryan said. “How am I supposed to take their word that they sent him to Burma?”
The New York Times reports that flight tracking data shows that the chartered Gulfstream V jet took the men from Harlingen, Texas, to a refueling stop in Ireland, and then landed in Djibouti, in eastern Africa, Wednesday morning. The plane, the paper helpfully notes, is often chartered for immigration flights, and is in fact the same one used to return basketball star Brittney Griner to the US in 2022 after she was released from prison in Russia.
Just to make clear to the government what he means by “adequate notification,” since DHS keeps trying to bum-rush detainees out of the country, Murphy specified in his order, which applies to any third-country deportations from the US, that going forward, that the government must give written notice to “to both the non-citizen and the non-citizen’s counsel in a language the non-citizen can understand”; that the notice must specify where they’re going to be sent; and that the detainee must be given a minimum of 10 days to argue they have a “reasonable fear” of being sent there. If they do fear being sent to a particular country, the government has to reopen their removal case, and even if not, the government must wait another 15 days to allow the non-citizen to “seek reopening of their immigration proceedings.”
Murphy also wants the name of everyone in the government who was involved in the decision to try deporting the men in violation of his April order, in case he decides to charge them with contempt.
In conclusion, the fuckery continues with no letup.
[CNN / NBC News / Order in DVD v. DHS / NYT]
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>> In conclusion, the fuckery continues with no letup. <<
ANOTHER day ending in Y?
How many can there be in one week?
Just updated with a slightly clearer discussion of how these guys are definitely crimers who completed their sentences, and are definitely eligible for deportation, but also they still have due process rights. Refresh your browser if you wanna see that bit.