Eight people from Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, Mexico and South Sudan were on a flight reportedly intended for South Sudan this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After a deportation flight with eight migrants left Texas reportedly intended for South Sudan this week, a federal judge on Wednesday ruled that the Trump administration had violated a previous order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts said at a hearing that the administration had failed to adhere to an injunction he issued in March that prevented people from being sent to countries other than their own without opportunities to raise fears of persecution or torture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed Wednesday morning that eight people from Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, Mexico and South Sudan had been deported this week. According to DHS, many of them had violent criminal convictions, including murder and sexual assault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe department\u2019s actions,\u201d Murphy said, \u201care unquestionably violative of this court\u2019s order.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The White House stood by its actions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Trump Administration removed dangerous criminal illegal aliens from America in full compliance with all court orders,\u201d White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement Wednesday evening. \u201cWe are confident in the legality of our actions and do not apologize for acting to protect the American people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Government attorneys said that the migrants are in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and that the plane has since landed. They declined to share the location of the plane\u2019s final destination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a written order Wednesday night, Murphy ordered that the individuals removed from the U.S. “be given a reasonable fear interview in private, with the opportunity for the individual to have counsel of their choosing present during the interview.\u201d Murphy said they must be allowed all the access they would have otherwise received in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Court is not \u2014 in ordering this remedy \u2014 making any findings or conclusions that compliance with these processes before deportation would have satisfied the requirements of its Preliminary Injunction in the first instance,\u201d the judge wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Murphy, who relayed the sequence of events leading to the deportations after more than 30 minutes in a sealed proceeding, said the people were notified of their destination \u201csometime in the evening\u201d Monday, outside business hours. <\/strong>He added that they left the ICE facility en route to a nearby airport the next morning at 9:35 CT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Without sufficient time to consult an attorney or family members, the judge said, it was \u201cimpossible\u201d for those people to \u201chave a meaningful opportunity to object\u201d to their deportations to a third country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe non-citizens at issue had fewer than 24 hours\u2019 notice, and zero business hours\u2019 notice, before being put on a plane and sent to a country\u201d for which the U.S. has issued a \u201cdo not travel\u201d order, Murphy wrote, making very clear the parameters of his refined order \u2014 which includes a new nationwide 10-day window allowing migrants to provide a fear-based claim before being removed from the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A State Department travel advisory warns Americans not to go to South Sudan \u201cdue to crime, kidnapping and armed conflict\u201d and notes that in March, because of conditions on the ground, it \u201cordered the departure of non-emergency U.S. government employees from South Sudan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Immigration attorneys told Murphy that at least two of their clients, from Myanmar and Vietnam, were deported Tuesday morning to South Sudan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s possible one of the migrants, Nyo Mint, might have been diverted to his home country, Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), but his San Antonio-based immigration attorney, Jonathan Ryan, said that he is still in the dark about where his client was, and that he has been \u201cdisappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI have not heard from my client,\u201d Ryan said. \u201cHow am I supposed to take their word that they sent him to Burma?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ryan said the government is acting as if due process is a privilege, saying it is a problem \u201cwhen we stop doing due process for unpopular people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At a DHS news conference before the hearing, spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told reporters about the migrants that \u201cno country on Earth wanted to accept them because their crimes were so uniquely barbaric.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n McLaughlin also criticized the court system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cActivist judges are on the other side, fighting to get them back onto the United States soil,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n