Trump administration completes contentious deportations to South Sudan

After ineligible battle, US sends 8 detainees to state it has advised citizens not to sojourn owed to ‘crime, conflict’.

The United States has confirmed it completed the deportations of 8 men to South Sudan, a time aft a US justice cleared the mode for President Donald Trump’s medication to nonstop them to the violence-hit African country.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said connected Saturday that the men were deported a time earlier, connected US Independence Day connected Friday, aft they lost a last-minute ineligible bid to halt their transfer.

The 8 detainees – immigrants from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, South Sudan and Vietnam – had been held nether defender astatine a US subject basal successful Djibouti for weeks.

A staffer moving astatine Juba airdrome successful South Sudan told the Reuters quality bureau that the craft carrying the men had arrived connected Saturday astatine 6am section clip (04:00 GMT). Their existent determination is not known.

In a statement, DHS said the 8 men had been convicted of a scope of crimes, including first-degree murder, robbery, cause trafficking and intersexual assault.

Their lawsuit had go a flashpoint successful ongoing ineligible battles implicit the Trump administration’s run of wide deportations, including removals to alleged “third countries” wherever rights groups accidental deportees look information risks and imaginable abuses.

“These 3rd state deportations are wrong, period. And the United States should not beryllium sending radical to a literal warfare zone,” progressive Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal wrote connected societal media earlier this week, urging the deportations to beryllium blocked.

The 8 men had been held successful a converted shipping instrumentality successful Djibouti since precocious May, erstwhile an earlier deportation formation to South Sudan was halted by the courts implicit owed process concerns.

The US Supreme Court has doubly ruled that the Trump medication could deport them to countries extracurricular of their homelands, issuing its latest determination connected Thursday (PDF).

That aforesaid night, the 8 detainees had filed an appeal, arguing that their “impermissibly punitive” deportation to South Sudan would interruption the US Constitution, which prohibits “cruel and antithetic punishment”.

But Judge Brian Murphy of Boston, whose rulings had antecedently halted efforts to statesman deportations to the African country, ruled connected Friday evening that the Supreme Court had tied his hands, clearing the mode for the deportations to spell ahead.

On Saturday, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin hailed the removals arsenic “a triumph for the regularisation of law, information and information of the American people”.

The US State Department advises citizens not to question to South Sudan owed to “crime, kidnapping, and equipped conflict”.

The United Nations has besides warned that a governmental situation embroiling the African state could reignite a brutal civilian warfare that ended successful 2018.

Last week, Blaine Bookey, ineligible manager astatine the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies astatine the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco, condemned the US’s usage of deportations to 3rd countries.

“The administration’s accrued usage of 3rd state transfers flies successful the look of owed process rights, the United States’ planetary ineligible obligations, and basal principles of quality decency,” Bookey said successful a statement.

Source:

Al Jazeera and quality agencies