A federal judge declared on Wednesday that the deportation of immigrants by the Trump Administration in Libya would have violated an order of the court that issued in March, creating a legal impediment to what would be a strong escalation of the repression of the immigration of President Trump.
The written order, of Judge Brian E. Murphy of Massachusetts, was in response to a request from the immigration lawyers to block what they said was an American military flight planned to transport a group of Laoti, Vietnamese and Filipino migrants in North Africa.
The lawyers, citing the accounts of their migrant customers, who had been told that they would be deported to Libya this week, argued that the removals would “clearly” challenge a previous order of judge Murphy who required that migrants were provided at least 15 days to contest deportations in places other than their countries of origin if they had had a reason to be sent there.
The judge agreed.
“In case of doubt-the court does not see anyone-alleged imminent removals, as reported by the news agencies and since the complaints try to confirm with the accounts of the members of the class and public information, they would clearly violate the order of this court,” wrote the judge Murphy, appointed biden.
The deposit came after US officials declared Tuesday that the Trump administration was planning to transfer migrants to Libya to an US military plane. They said that the flight could leave as soon as Wednesday, depositing migrants in a country that was collected by conflicts and divided for years between two hostile administrations.
But after the plans were made public in the news on Tuesday evening, the administration faced rejection. The rival governments of Libya both denied Wednesday that they accepted to receive immigrants deported from the United States, stating that this would violate the sovereignty of the North African nation.
On Wednesday afternoon it is not clear if the Trump administration would have gone on with the flight to Libya. Trump did not answer a question on deportations to the nation on Wednesday directly. The officials of the White House refused to comment on the order of judge Murphy or deportation flights to Libya.
The decision to move forward with deportations to Libya would be surprising, also for an administration that has already sent hundreds of migrants to a prison of terrorism in El Salvador.
Libya manages numerous detention structures for migrants that Amnesty International has marked a “Hellscape” in a 2021 report, claiming to have found tests of sexual violence against prisoners both adults and children.
But the helpers of Mr. Trump hope that these deportations spread fear among immigrants without documents still in the United States and encourage them to leave voluntarily.
The number of prisoners and nationalities of those who are at risk of being sent to Libya has remained unclear. But in the last few days, the Trump administration had pushed Libya to accept migrants of various nations, according to an administration official who is familiar with the matter.
The push of the United States included a proposal for Libya to accept more than two dozen prisoners from other nations, said the official. The agreement has not been aimed.
In the judicial documents of Wednesday, the lawyers of immigration declared that they had heard of migrants held in southern Texas, which were informed by the immigration officials of having to sign a document that agreed to be expelled in Libya.
“When everyone refused, each were put in a separate and handcuffed room (basically, lonely) to convince them to sign it,” wrote Trina Realmuto, a lawyer with the National Immigration Contenty Alliance.
Another lawyer heard from a Laotian man who learned that he could be deported to Saudi Arabia or Libya and then was transferred from the Pearsall detention center, to Texas.
Mrs. Realmuto and other lawyers claimed that deportations violate a temporary order issued by judge Murphy in March, imposing on the government to give migrants who have a “final removal order” at least 15 days to contest the deportation to the so -called third -party nations.
“Any class member who is removed in Libya faces a strong probability of captivity followed by torture and even disappeared or death,” said Mrs. Realmuto. “In fact, given the documentation of Libya's human rights, it is inconceivable that the members of the class of other countries never accept removing in Libya, but instead they would uniformly seek protection from being removed in Libya”.
The Trump administration continued to expel people in the so -called third -party countries, despite the previous order of judge Murphy. The administration, for example, continued to send the Venezuelans to a prison of terrorism to El Salvador, although those cases were contested on another legal base: because the Venezuelans were expelled from the United States under a law in war of the 18th century known as Alien Enemies Act.
The administration defended the removals, saying that they do not violate the order of the court because the judgment of judge Murphy applies only to the officials of the National Security Department and those Venezuelan prisoners were sent by officials of the Department of Defense.
The administration seemed to use the same playbook which provided to send migrants to Libya on a military plane. But judge Murphy also warned last month that his order applied to each federal agency. Everyone, he said, including the Pentagon, had to provide sufficient notice to migrants before removing them in a third nation.
Erik, Isam al-acsh, Hamed Aleziz AND Alan Feuer Contributed relationships.