May 21 (UPI) -- The Trump administration violated a previous court order when it deported at least six migrants to South Sudan without providing them an opportunity to challenge their removal to a country where they could be tortured, persecuted or killed, a judge ruled Wednesday.
The migrants were loaded onto a plane on Tuesday and flown to South Sudan less than 24 hours after receiving notice of their removal and without an opportunity to assert claims for protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
The U.S. State Department warns American against traveling to South Sudan due to "crime, kidnapping and armed conflict."
Judge Brian Murphy of the U.S. District of Massachusetts issued his order Wednesday in a case filed in March challenging the Trump administration policy of sending migrants to a country that is not their own without prior notice and a meaningful opportunity to contest their removal on the basis of fear of persecution, torture or death.
Late Tuesday, in response to an emergency order filed by the migrants' attorneys seeking to prevent their clients' rushed removal, Murphy warned the Trump administration against deporting them and ordered it to maintain custody of the migrants if they had already left the United States.
In his ruling Wednesday, Murphy, an appointee of President Joe Biden, admonished the Trump administration over the deportations, stopping just short of accusing it of willfully ignoring his previous preliminary injunction.
"Defendants maintain that ambiguity in the phrase 'meaningful opportunity' precipitated this controversy. Indeed, when the Court issued the Preliminary Injunction, it declined to elaborate on what constitutes a 'meaningful opportunity,' preferring instead to let experience show through hard cases the finer points of what is required under the Due Process Clause," he wrote.
"To be clear, this is not one of those hard cases."
The migrants were given less than 24 hours' notice of their removal, zero business hours' notice, language barriers were present, anda lack of information and attorneys' inability to access their clients confirm for the court that "no reasonable interpretation of the Court's Preliminary Injunction could endorse yesterday's events," he wrote.
To remedy violating the preliminary injunction, Murphy ordered the Trump administration to give each of the six migrants what is called a reasonable fear interview in private with legal counsel of their choosing.
The legal counsel must be commensurate with what they would have had access to in the United States and the migrant and their representative must be given at least 72 hours' notice of each scheduled interview.
If the migrants' claim does not meet the Department of Homeland Securities' threshold of a "reasonable fear," they must be provided with at least 15 days to try to reopen immigration proceedings to challenge their removal, during which they must remain in DHS custody, the remedy order states
The DHS, the order continues, may choose to conduct the process in South Sudan or return them to the United States.
"The Court cautions Defendants that this remedy should not be construed as setting forth a course of conduct that would constitute compliance with the Preliminary Injunction, and the Court is not -- in ordering this remedy -- 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," Murphy warned.
Because of the Trump administration's stance concerning the definition of "meaningful opportunity," Murphy stipulated that all removals of migrants to a third country must be preceded by written notice in the language of the non-citizen who is then given a minimum of 10 days to raise a claim under the U.N. Convention Against Torture.
If the migrants' claim is not considered a "reasonable fear," they must be provided a minimum of 15 days to seek to reopen their immigration proceedings, he said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and DHS officials held a press conference Wednesday to attack Murphy, whom they accused of trying to "dictate the foreign policy and national security of America."
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin described him as an activist judge fighting the Trump administration to return criminals to the United States.
She said they had deported eight migrants with criminal records to a country she would not name due to "safety and operational security," despite ICE naming South Sudan in the title of the video uploaded to YouTube.
She accused Murphy of "trying to force the United States to bring back these uniquely barbaric monsters who present a clear and present threat to the safety of the American people and American victims."
She also claimed that they were compliant with court orders.
