Trump Administration Expels Eight Men to War-Torn “Third Country” South Sudan

The Trump administration succeeded in its quest to deport the eight men it imprisoned on a U S military base in Djibouti to violence-plagued South Sudan on Saturday expanding its globe-spanning effort to expel immigrants to so-called third countries 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 Safeguard spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin notified The Intercept in an email The Trump administration reveled in a Thursday - Supreme Court decision granting its request to expel the men from Camp Lemonnier to the restive East African nation Their deportation marked a dramatic win for the Trump administration s efforts to exile immigrants to countries other than the ones they hail from and which are notorious for violence and human rights violations Related Trump Is Building a Global Gulag for Immigrants Captured by ICE More than a decade of intermittent political turmoil and outright civil war has left South Sudan politically unstable and ravaged by violence Fresh clashes between armed groups drove people to flee their homes in three months according to a June United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees document The country is subject to a U N warning about the foreseen for full-scale civil war and a U S State Department Level Do Not Movement advisory The Trump administration abdicated the safety and legal fates of the eight men only one of whom is South Sudanese to the East African nation The men were transported to a hotel in South Sudan s capital Juba where they are under cabinet supervision according to Edmund Yakani a longtime human rights defender in South Sudan and executive director of the Public Empowerment for Progress Organization or CEPO Yakani reported The Intercept that the men arrived by U S military flight on July around a m local time A photo of the men published by the Department of Homeland Guard shows them onboard a movement plane handcuffed and shackled at the feet surrounded by camouflage-uniformed personnel DHS deported these eight men to South Sudan one of the most of dangerous countries on the planet without any opportunity to contest their deportations based on their fears of torture or death there The U S State Department advises people to draft a will and to establish a proof of life protocol before traveling there Trina Realmuto a lawyer for the immigrants in the scenario and executive director at National Immigration Litigation Alliance stated The Intercept Thursday s Supreme Court ruling allowing the transfer added to 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 tortured or killed With Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting the court lifted an order from U S District Judge Brian Murphy that had blocked the men s expulsion to South Sudan 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 Sotomayor wrote in a bitter dissent In this situation the Cabinet seeks to nullify it by deporting noncitizens to potentially dangerous countries without notice or the opportunity to assert a fear of torture All of the men deported to South Sudan had been convicted of serious crimes and multiple had finished serving lengthy prison sentences The bulk of the men who hail from Cuba Laos Mexico Myanmar Pakistan South Korea and Vietnam have no ties to South Sudan An eighth is South Sudanese but left Africa when he was a baby and a decade before the nation of South Sudan existed as its own country A Justice Department attorney informed a federal judge Friday that South Sudan informed the U S it would offer the deportees temporary immigration status but the lawyer could not confirm whether they would be detained on arrival The Trump administration has announced in court filings that South Sudanese personnel have offered assurances that the men will not face torture Earlier this year Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked all visas for South Sudanese passport holders citing the country s past refusal to accept deported nationals Yakani a lawyer who once investigated atrocities in Darfur for the U N revealed that South Sudan was obligated to ensure that the deportees are not mistreated or tortured We are demanding the governments of South Sudan and the United States be transparent and open on this arrangement in terms of any deal reached between Juba and Washington D C he reported The Intercept Yakani stressed that the leadership should right now ensure that the deportees are put in touch with their families and lawyers Sources in South Sudan who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of regime retribution reported that the ruling body was planning to reach out to the countries of origin of deportees who wished to return to their homelands The productive expulsion of the eight men to South Sudan was the latest in the Trump administration s pursuits to expel immigrants to so-called third countries when 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 prospective immigrants with the possibility of being expelled to dangerous nations Make no mistake about it these deportations were punitive and unconstitutional Realmuto announced Yet the Supreme Court s procedural ruling on the shadow docket and devoid of any reasoning prevented the district court from enforcing its order which had provided basic due process rights Murphy the District Court judge had issued a nationwide injunction in a prior affair requiring the administration to give deportees advance notice of their destination and a meaningful chance to object if they concluded they d be in danger of harm He intervened in the matter of the eight men despite a Supreme Court ruling last month that put his injunction on hold On Friday Murphy revealed the latest Supreme Court ruling required him to deny proposes raised in a last-ditch lawsuit the men filed to prevent their expulsion to South Sudan deciding that the new suit raised substantially similar states to their previous scenario The eleventh-hour lawsuit argued that expulsion to South Sudan would be impermissibly punitive under an Supreme Court precedent that bars deporting immigrants to countries when doing so inflicts an infamous punishment The Supreme Court s contemporary decisions have been a boon to the administration s mass deportation regime The administration has already 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 It has been employing strong-arm tactics with dozens of smaller weaker and economically dependent nations to expand its global gulag for expelled immigrants The deals are being conducted in secret and neither the State Department nor U S Immigration and Customs Enforcement will discuss them With the green light from the Supreme Court thousands of immigrants are in danger of being disappeared into this framework of deportee dumping grounds 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 Regime to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled Sotomayor wrote in a dissent last month The post Trump Administration Expels Eight Men to War-Torn Third Country South Sudan appeared first on The Intercept