A federal judge in Massachusetts said Wednesday that President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security violated a court order this week when it quietly flew eight migrants to a country they do not hail from.
The administration has so far refused to say where the men currently are, but lawyers say they were told they were going to South Sudan.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy had issued an order in April barring the government from deporting people to a third-party country — a nation other than the U.S. or their nation of origin — without first giving them a meaningful chance to contest it. The men are originally from countries including Vietnam and Myanmar.
Lawyers for the men said in court documents that they were given just hours before they were deported instead of 15 days as directed by the judge.
“The department’s actions in this case are unquestionably violative of this court’s order,” Murphy said in the hearing, according to several outlets. He left the question of potential consequences for another day.
“Based on what I have learned, I don’t see how anybody could say that these individuals had a meaningful opportunity to object,” the judge said, per NPR.
In an emergency hearing late Tuesday, Murphy had ordered the Trump administration to maintain custody of the men, so they could be returned to the U.S. more easily if he rules that their removal was illegal.
Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told reporters earlier Wednesday that the individuals were “uniquely barbaric monsters who present a clear and present threat to the safety of the American people and American victims.”
“These are the monsters that the district judge is trying to protect,” McLaughlin said, gesturing to a screen with mugshots of each man. She said they had been found guilty of crimes including murder.
McLaughlin also echoed the Trump administration’s posturing on the federal judiciary, suggesting that deportation amounted to a foreign policy decision and that individual federal judges do not have the power to tell the president how to conduct foreign policy. The Constitution, however, makes clear that individuals have the right to due process, even if they have been accused of heinous crimes.
The Trump administration has been locked in court battles since opting to fly around 260 mostly Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador, where they are still being held.
Administration officials have said in recent weeks that they have been looking for other places to take deported immigrants from the U.S., including places in Africa.
South Sudan is notoriously unstable and currently teetering on the brink of another civil war. It’s on the U.S. government’s “do not travel” list, and the State Department advises people who must travel to the country to draft a will before going.
