U.S. immigration officials have begun deporting about 12 South Asian migrants to South Sudan, according to a Tuesday court filing and several media reports.
According to multiple reports, immigration lawyers learned from a detention officer’s email that a Burmese national, identified as “N.M.,” was “removed…to South Sudan,” they wrote in a filing seeking the court’s intervention and the return of the migrants.
A second migrant, a Vietnamese national identified as T.T.P. in the filing, “appears to have suffered the same fate” along with at least 10 others.
The removal violates an earlier order, the lawyers said, noting they had last filed an emergency motion on May 7, after media reports indicated immigration officials were seeking to deport N.M. and others to Libya and Saudi Arabia.
The court had sided with plaintiffs, and “the men were ultimately transported back to an immigration detention center after remaining on a bus on the base’s tarmac for three or four hours,” the filing said.
The filing also noted that a flawed peace deal in South Sudan collapsed this week, and N.M. is being flown “into a country that is now returning to full-blown and catastrophic civil war.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In early April, the Trump administration banned visas for South Sudanese nationals, as part of President Donald Trump’s ever-broadening anti-immigration platform.
Later in April, the Government of South Sudan apologized to the American Government for the diplomatic row that erupted when the former refused to let in a Congolese deportee from the U.S, and pledged to expeditiously facilitate the deportation of its affected citizens back to South Sudan.
On 6 April, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States was revoking visas for South Sudanese passport holders because the country’s transitional government refused to receive citizens who were expelled from the U.S. However, the following day, South Sudan Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Apuk Ayuel Mayen revealed that upon arrival, it was determined that the individual who presented a South Sudanese travel document under the name Nimeri Garang is a national of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) whose real name is Makula Kintu and that he was returned to the sending country (U.S.).
South Sudan, however, backpedaled, under pressure, on its decision not to allow Kintu entry and he again landed in Juba on 9 April after the U.S. revoked visas for South Sudanese passport holders.
A press release issued by Vice President Benjamin Bol Mel on 12 April said the Government of South Sudan wishes to express its respect and appreciation to President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio for their leadership and continued commitment to enforcing U.S. immigration policy.
“We apologize for any inconvenience caused to the United States of America and reiterate our desire to resolve this issue swiftly and in a spirit of cooperation,” the statement read in part.
The Republican president has said the United States faces an “invasion” by “foreign criminals.”
In February, Trump invoked rarely used wartime legislation to fly some 250 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador without any court hearings, alleging they belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, a charge that their families and lawyers deny.