ICE Said They Were Being Flown to Louisiana. Their Flight Landed in Africa

When eight men in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement boarded a plane in May leaders recounted them that they were being sent on a short trip from Texas to another ICE facility in Louisiana A great number of hours later the plane landed in Djibouti The men were held in shipping containers for weeks shackles on their legs This past weekend they were expelled to the violence-plagued nation of South Sudan This deception revealed by an Intercept study highlights the lengths to which the U S executive will go to further its anti-immigrant agenda and deport people to so-called third countries to which they have no connections Related Trump Administration Expels Eight Men to War-Torn Third Country South Sudan Lawyers for three of the men mentioned that their clients were reported after resisting deportation to Africa that they were instead being transferred to a detention facility in Louisiana ICE then hustled them onto a plane in the wee hours of the morning and flew them out of the country without their knowledge or consent This account was further corroborated by the wife of one of those same men who was informed about ICE s tactics in real time This underscores just how abysmal and reprehensible the executive s healing of these men has been from the very beginning and the fact that the authorities made no genuine attempt to comply with the district court injunction in place prior to shipping them out of the United States declared Glenda Aldana Madrid a staff attorney at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project who is representing one of the men Tuan Thanh Phan Aldana Madrid added Tuan and the other men had the right to know where they were going and yet the authorities did not have the basic decency to do even that before putting them on a plane bound for a country none of them knew and that is on the brink of civil war The Intercept sent numerous requests to ICE for comment Spokesperson Miguel Alvarez acknowledged receipt of the questions but did not reply While the men were in transit in May a federal judge intervened Citing a prior nationwide injunction requiring the administration to give deportees advance notice of their destination and a meaningful chance to object if they inferred they d be in danger of harm the eight men were not flown directly to South Sudan They were instead imprisoned for weeks at a U S military base Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti shackled at the feet in a converted shipping container The men had been convicted of violent crimes plenty of had served lengthy prison sentences and had orders of removal meaning the establishment had the legal authority to deport them But the majority of the men who hail from Cuba Laos Mexico Myanmar Pakistan South Korea and Vietnam have no ties to South Sudan An eighth man is South Sudanese but left Africa when he was a baby before the nation of South Sudan even existed Last Thursday the Supreme Court ruled that the expulsion to South Sudan could go forward the latest in a latest spate of decisions that have paved the way for the Trump administration s mass deportation regime and have restricted immigrants rights to object on the grounds that they might be abused or face death The United States may not deport noncitizens to a country where they are likely to be tortured or killed International and domestic law guarantee that basic human right Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a bitter dissent to the Thursday decision In this incident the Governing body seeks to nullify it by deporting noncitizens to potentially dangerous countries without notice or the opportunity to assert a fear of torture More than a decade of intermittent political turmoil and outright civil war has left South Sudan politically unstable and ravaged by violence Current clashes between armed groups drove more than people to flee their homes in three months according to a June United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees summary The country is subject to a U N warning about the feasible for full-scale civil war South Sudan is also under a U S State Department Level Do Not Trip advisory and the department advises those who choose to go there to draft a will establish a proof of life protocol with family members and leave DNA samples with one s diagnostic provider After weeks of delays by activist judges that put our law enforcement in danger ICE deported these barbaric criminals sic illegal aliens to South Sudan Department of Homeland Safety spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin stated The Intercept in an email after the Trump administration succeeded in deporting the eight men to South Sudan on Saturday Interviews with family members and lawyers of the eight deportees as well as contemporaneous documents provide insights into the confusion and deception sowed by ICE before the immigrants were expelled to Africa A relative of one of the deportees who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect himself and his family member stated the men were bombarded with contradictory information His family member now in South Sudan declared the men were narrated they would be sent to Africa but received conflicting details I do not think they gave him enough information about what was going on he explained The Intercept Court documents and emails examined by The Intercept show that one of the eight men Nyo Myint an immigrant from Myanmar referred to in the documents as N M who has limited proficiency in English was served a notice of removal which disclosed that ICE intended to deport him from a detention center in Port Isabel Texas to South Africa not South Sudan The certificate shows that the notice was read to Myint in English without an interpreter at a m on May and that Myint refused to sign the document Ngoc Phan the wife of Tuan Thanh Phan who hails from Vietnam offered a similar account from contemporaneous conversations with her husband Ngoc spoke with Tuan by telephone while he Myint and others were facing deportation and she offered a narrative that corroborated the legal documents and accounts by lawyers who spoke with The Intercept Everyone protested because no one from that group was from South Africa They mentioned We don t know anybody there We re not from there We don t want to go there And no one signed the paperwork that the officers gave them reported Ngoc relaying what Tuan reported her on May Tuan Phan and Ahmer Shaikh another ICE prisoner ultimately separated from the group who spoke to the New York Times offered nearly identical accounts Both reported that everyone refused to sign the forms An ICE agent narrated them something to the effect of I ve got good news for you and bad news for you The good news is we are not going to deport you to South Africa The bad news is we are going to deport you guys to South Sudan Ngoc Phan explained The Intercept that Tuan replied I don t know what s going to happen to me there I don t want to go there Documents show that at p m on May Myint was served another removal notice which he also refused to sign that stated ICE intended to send him to South Sudan Lawyers for Tuan Phan and another of the men Cuban national Jose Rodriguez advised The Intercept that following the men s protests against being sent to Africa ICE seemingly relented and stated them that they would be transferred to another detention facility within the United States Ngoc Phan commented the same The U S ruling body deceived these men up to the very last minute Ngoc informed The Intercept Around three or four in the morning on Tuesday the th they gathered this group up which included my husband They explained We re going to transfer all of you guys to a detention center in Oakdale Louisiana instead ICE does not have a publicly listed detention center in Oakdale Louisiana though the federal prison complex in the town was formerly listed as an ICE facility and an immigration court still operates on the premises When ICE stated that Marie Ange Blaise a -year-old citizen of Haiti had died in ICE custody in Florida this spring the agency wrote that she was previously held at Richwood Correctional Center in Oakdale Louisiana though that facility is located in Monroe two hours away Aldana Madrid of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project explained that her client described her that he was even given a form to sign He reported that the men were explained about and they were truly given a piece of paper to sign for the transfer Tuan announced I saw the paper and it explained Oakdale Louisiana so I signed it But he says they were not given a copy of it Aldana Madrid explained that after the men left the Texas facility the deception continued according to Tuan They were narrated Oh it takes about hours to drive there but if we fly it s faster So we re flying But it wasn t until they were on the plane for more than minutes that Tuan recalls having heard them say something about being sent somewhere else revealed Aldana Madrid A limited hours later the men were communicated that they would be landing in Ireland to refuel Then they were like Wait where are we going And they were notified Djibouti Tuan urged Djibouti where s that And ICE was like In Africa But minutes into the flight they still thought they were going to Louisiana reported Aldana Madrid Matthew Archambeault who represents Rodriguez commented his client offered a near-identical account They were given a piece of paper that reported they were going to South Africa According to my client everyone noted Fuck that We re not signing And then they went to their cells Archambeault stated The Intercept He declared that maybe two hours later they called them back and reported them Hey we have good news and bad news The good news is you re not going to South Africa The bad news is you re going to South Sudan Later mentioned Archambeault the men were reported We re gonna fly you to Oakdale When they were boarding the plane one of the men apparently voiced concerns that the charter jet was an unlikely choice for the short flight from Texas to Louisiana Rodriguez described Archambeault that the men eventually realized they had been airborne too long to be heading to Louisiana When they landed in Ireland to refuel they knew for certain they had been expelled from the United States A third member of the group was also reported by an ICE official he would be sent to Louisiana according to his lawyer who spoke on the condition that neither of their identities would be revealed to protect their privacy I can confirm that directly prior to being removed my client was advised that the men were being sent to Louisiana the attorney communicated The Intercept by email Experts noted that the type of deception perpetrated by ICE was nothing new that the authorities frequently failed to act in good faith and that agents regularly deceived immigrants in the discipline of their work Trina Realmuto a lawyer for the immigrants expelled to South Sudan and executive director at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance announced the deception was far from exceptional We constantly hear about DHS officers lying to noncitizens about what is happening in their cases and where they are going or telling them to sign papers based on wrong information she explained The Intercept This has been happening for years The Trump administration deported the men to South Sudan as part of a globe-spanning effort to expel immigrants to so-called third countries in cases where U S law bars them from being sent to their home countries when their home countries will not accept them or seemingly as a punitive measure and a means to frighten other immigrants or feasible immigrants with the possibility of being expelled to dangerous nations Last month McLaughlin the ICE spokesperson claimed that ICE was unable to deport the eight men to their home countries Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that the U S leadership did not inform her authorities that Mexican national Jesus Munoz Gutierrez was sent to Djibouti She also did not oppose his repatriation to Mexico Experts say that these contemporary efforts to expel Mexicans to situation zones like Libya and now South Sudan demonstrate the casual cruelty of the Trump administration I ve been doing immigration detention work for a very long time I ve never in my life seen Mexico refuse to take back one of its nationals ever Anwen Hughes the senior director of legal strategy for refugee programs at Human Rights First informed The Intercept last month The Port Isabel detention center where the men were held before being flown to Africa is less than miles from the Mexican boundary The U S appears to be looking for really implausible destinations to send people It s not just punitive it s deliberately terrifying and honestly perverse reported Hughes The Trump administration has been employing strong-arm tactics with dozens of smaller weaker and economically dependent nations to create a global architecture of deportee dumping grounds The administration has explored deals with more than a quarter of the world s nations to accept so-called third-country nationals deported persons who are not their citizens The negotiations are being conducted in secret and neither the State Department nor ICE will discuss them With the green light from the Supreme Court thousands of immigrants are in danger of being disappeared into this global gulag Apparently the Court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in far-flung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Governing body to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled Sotomayor wrote in a dissent last month That use of discretion is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable The post ICE Noted They Were Being Flown to Louisiana Their Flight Landed in Africa appeared first on The Intercept