Faith Nyasuguta
The Trump administration is under fire after immigrant rights advocates accused officials of violating a court order by deporting nearly a dozen migrants,including individuals from Myanmar and Vietnam, to South Sudan, a country they are not from.
In an emergency court filing on Tuesday, lawyers appealed to U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy to intervene and order the immediate return of the migrants. They argued that the deportations were carried out without giving the migrants a chance to raise concerns about potential torture or persecution, a process the judge had explicitly required before deportation to third countries.
The situation escalated during a hastily arranged virtual hearing, where Judge Murphy warned a Justice Department attorney that the deportation could constitute criminal contempt. He even considered ordering the plane carrying the migrants to South Sudan to turn around mid-flight.
One of the deportees, identified only as NM, is a Myanmar national with limited English skills. His lawyer revealed that NM was given a removal notice only in English and refused to sign it, directly breaching a previous court order requiring accessible communication for non-English speakers. Despite this, NM was reportedly flown out of Texas early Tuesday.
In another alarming account, the spouse of a Vietnamese detainee emailed his lawyer, saying that he and at least ten others had also been deported from the same Texas detention center to South Sudan. None of the migrants had any known ties to the African country.
Attorneys representing the group emphasized the urgency of the matter, referencing a recent Supreme Court case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador, as proof that immediate reversal is both possible and necessary.
“Return is imminently reasonable- and necessary-in such a situation,” the lawyers wrote, citing the high risk of danger in South Sudan, which has endured years of violent conflict, political instability, and extreme poverty since gaining independence in 2011. The U.S. State Department currently advises against travel to South Sudan due to high levels of crime, kidnapping, and armed clashes.
The Department of Homeland Security had not immediately commented on the ongoing case.
With growing scrutiny over how migrant deportations are handled, this case could have significant legal and political repercussions for the Trump administration’s already controversial immigration policies.
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