Stephen Miller Throws Dart At Map, Deports Migrants To ... South Sudan?

Is that legal when the country's on the edge of civil war? South Sudan, we mean.

May 21, 2025

Photo of a round layer cake on a blue plate on a table. The cake's white icing is decorated with blue icing dots around the top, and large letters in blue icing reading 'WTF' (no question mark). To the upper left of the cake is a tray of apples. — It’s the ICE-ing on the cake. Photo by Ann Larie Valentine, Creative Commons License 2.0

In apparent violation of a court order, the Trump administration has begun deporting migrants from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan. Or to be carefully accurate since these shitbags never tell the truth about what they’re doing, the government appears to have begun flying deportees from those two countries to South Sudan, because their own governments refuse to accept back their deported citizens. Last night, a federal judge ordered the government to keep the deportees in its custody while he considers whether to order they be returned to US soil.

The order, by US District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts, requires the government to

“maintain custody and control of class members currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country, to ensure the practical feasibility of return if the Court finds that such removals were unlawful.”
While Murphy left the details to the government’s discretion, he said he expects the migrants “will be treated humanely.”

And yes, that was an order, not a hope. Whether the government will follow it is anyone’s guess, since it already appears to have sent the Asian deportees to an unstable African nation that’s on the brink of civil war. That also seems like a pretty blatant violation of Murphy’s own April 18 order blocking such “third country removals,” unless the government follows some very clear fucking rules.

We should also note that this is separate from the cases where Trump used the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to send people without due process to that torture prison in El Salvador, forever, a process the Supremes have put on hold for now. Instead, this is a class action case involving migrants who actually did get due process in their cases so far, and are now under formal deportation orders. The legal question here is limited to the Trump/Stephen Miller regime’s bizarre efforts to deport people all over the world, to countries like Rwanda, and now South Sudan, that agree (for the right price) to take deportees whose home countries refuse to accept their return.

In that 48-page April order, Murphy wrote that the case

presents a simple question: before the United States forcibly sends someone to a country other than their country of origin, must that person be told where they are going and be given a chance to tell the United States that they might be killed if sent there?

Not surprisingly, Murphy ordered that before deporting anyone to countries to which they have no connections, the government must inform the person, in their own language, where it intends to send them, and give them a “meaningful opportunity” to contest being deported to those places if they would be placed in danger. That would include adequate advance notice, and information on how to file a challenge — again, in their own language. Not doing so would violate the migrant’s due process rights, Murphy said.

Just last Friday, the First Circuit Court of Appeals in New York refused the government’s “emergency” request to stay Murphy’s April order.

Now that the case of these southeast Asian migrants (apparently) sent to South Sudan is before Murphy, attorneys for the deportees argue — big surprise! — that their clients did not actually get any such opportunity to challenge their deportation, as the AP reports:

The apparent removal of one man from Myanmar was confirmed in an email from an immigration official in Texas, according to court documents. He was informed only in English, a language he does not speak well …

Similarly, NPR reports that attorneys for one Vietnamese man said he’d received less than 24 hours notice, and wasn’t given the chance to contest his deportation in his native language.

If those facts are true, “that leaves me in the uncomfortable position that this person is on their way to South Sudan in violation to my court order,” Murphy said during Tuesday's hearing.

Murphy ordered DHS last night to keep under its “custody and control” anyone it had deported to South Sudan or any other country, you fuckers, clearly trying to cut DHS off from once more arguing the deportees were no longer America’s problem once they’d been dragged in shackles off the plane. The AP reports that Murphy also ordered US officials to attend a hearing today to

identify the migrants impacted, address when and how they learned they would be removed to a third country, and what opportunity they were given to raise a fear-based claim. He also ruled that the government must provide information about the whereabouts of the migrants apparently already removed.

As NPR reports, there’s a lot of confusion — we’ll say it’s deliberate, too — about whether these folks have actually been sent to South Sudan, and if not, where they are. NPR reports that

Lawyers from DHS and the Department of Justice said during the hearing that the destination of the plane carrying T.T.P. was classified.

It wasn't immediately clear who else was on the plane, their nationalities, or how DHS can keep people in custody after they're removed to another country. DHS didn't immediately respond to a request for further comment after the judge's order.

On top of that, while attorneys for one man from Myanmar said that he’d already been deported to South Sudan, “Government lawyers disputed that and said he was on his way to his home country.”

The whole mess is a clusterfuck. See also this new Atlantic article about the larger fuckcluster of third-country deportations; it was published before the news of the deportations to South Sudan broke yesterday.

In a story published just before we were going to hit “post,” the BBC reports that DHS has just announced — in a statement that will probably also be full of shit — that it’s deporting eight “uniquely barbaric monsters” convicted of horrible crimes. Takes one to know one.

DHS spox Tricia McLaughlin, a master of Trumpspeak, insisted that South Sudan is not the final destination of the plane carrying them, but didn’t say where it was headed.

Ms McLaughlin told a briefing on Wednesday: “Every single one of them was convicted of a heinous crime, murder, rape, child rape, rape of a mentally and physically handicapped victim.”
She said it was “absurd for a US judge to try to dictate the foreign policy and national security of US”.

Maybe that’s true. Or maybe those eight deportees all committed terrible crimes, but other people who didn’t were also deported with them. In any case, due process is still a thing, even if Homeland Security Secretary Nazi Cosplay Barbie doesn’t know what’s in the Constitution.

We’ll keep you updated.

UPDATE: We’re learning a little more about the prisoners, via the American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. (Follow him on Bluesky and check his feed whenever there’s immigration-law news breaking.) He explains that DHS spox Tricia McLaughlin has gone Full Putin, calling the deportation flight a “military operation” — but not a special one — and implying it mustn’t be questioned. Reichlin-Melnick adds that the claim is “total bull, it's a private Gulfstream jet contracted by ICE.” she called the judge an “activist” and made a point of always referring to the eight men as “monsters.”

He also explains why the administration is particularly hot to send the detainees away ASAP and with as little due process as possible: They’ve literally finished their US prison sentences, but their home countries do not want them back, so now the administration is tripping over its own dick (and due process) to make them another country’s problem, any country:

As expected, the men had very serious criminal convictions. Many likely served decades in prison, and, had they been U.S. citizens, would have been released after serving their criminal sentence (as they had).
South Sudan is on the brink of civil war and these men already served their time.

And it wouldn’t be a DHS presser without vicious lies about a judge:

An ICE spokesperson attacks Judge Murphy, saying "this judge wants these criminals, these rapists, murderers, out on the streets."
That's a staggering insult to a federal judge trying to ensure that ICE follows his court order — which did NOT bar deportation or detention!

We certainly hope Judge Murphy has good security and is able to get his family to a safe location, and yes we are typing that sentence in the United States of America in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Twenty Five.

Christ.