Archive May 21, 2025

According to a judge in the US, reports of deportations to South Sudan appear to contradict his previous court order, according to a judge in the country.

US District Court Judge Brian Murphy held a virtual hearing on behalf of deported migrants reportedly on a flight to South Sudan on Tuesday in Boston, Massachusetts.

He requested the Trump administration’s lawyers identify the locations of the migrants. He also indicated that he could contact the pilots and request that the flight be turned around.

This may seem like contempt, Judge Murphy told Elianis Perez, a lawyer for the Trump Justice Department.

Perez claimed that the Department of Homeland Security had deemed this information to be “classified” in response to Murphy’s request for the location of the plane. Perez added that Murphy’s earlier court order had not been broken by the Trump administration.

The US Department of State alleged in a recent annual report that South Sudan had “significant human rights issues,” including torture and extrajudicial killings.

However, the Trump administration has been looking for places to send undocumented immigrants who are currently detained in the US, particularly those whose nations of origin refuse to accept them.

Judge Murphy claimed at the hearing on Tuesday that the flight to South Sudan appeared to be in violation of a preliminary injunction he issued on April 18 that forbade migrants from entering third-party nations other than their own.

The Trump administration had to provide the migrants with a fair chance of appealing their removal in accordance with that injunction.

Judge Murphy ruled that the migrants were simply looking for “an opportunity to explain why such a deportation will likely lead to their persecution, torture, and/or death.”

He cited the US Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, which guarantees a fair hearing in the US court system.

Lawyers for the migrants had made the announcement earlier this month that their clients were going to Libya, a second nation with serious human rights concerns, on May 7.

According to Judge Murphy, an appointee of former president Joe Biden, a deportation would violate his injunction.

The lawyers for those migrants emphasized how close a call that incident was in Tuesday’s emergency court filing. When the migrants were being ordered to be returned, they were already on a bus and sat on the tarmac of an airport.

The migrants are only identified by their initials and countries of origin, including Vietnam and Myanmar.

However, it requests immediate court intervention and details what allegedly happened to them over the course of the previous 24 hours.

The lawyers claim that a Myanmari immigrant, identified as NM in the court filings, was given a notice of removal on Monday. South Africa was the destination, according to the report. The sender of the email was recalled within ten minutes, according to the court filing.

A second notice of removal, this time mentioning South Sudan as the destination, allegedly arrived a few hours later.

NM declined to sign the document in both instances. In the emergency petition, the plaintiffs claim that NM had “limited English proficiency” and that they had not been given a translator to understand the English-language document.

By the time their appointment time arrived, NM’s lawyer had already informed him that he had already been taken from his detention facility and was headed for South Sudan, despite a lawyer’s statement that she intended to meet with him on Tuesday morning.

A copy of an email a family member of a deported victim sent to the attorneys is included in the emergency filing.

The email begins with “I believe my husband [name redacted] and ten other people were deported to South Africa or Sudan.

“This is wrong,” he declared. I’m concerned that my husband and his group, which includes Laos, Thailand, Pakistan, Korea, and Mexico residents, are being forced to flee to South Africa or Sudan. Help us, please! They are not permitted to do this.

After being detained in Venezuela for almost six months, a US citizen has been relocated to the US.

Joseph St. Clair, a veteran US Air Force veteran, was detained in November of last year, but his family confirmed his release on Tuesday.

Scott and Patti, St. Clair’s parents, said in a statement that “we are still processing this news, but we are overwhelmed with joy and gratitude.”

Richard Grenell, the US president’s special missions envoy, later stated on social media that he had met with Venezuelan officials to discuss the release.

Grenell attributed St. Clair’s liberation to Trump’s “America First” political platform.

He wrote, “Joe St. Clair is back in America.” “To negotiate an America First strategy, I met Venezuelan officials in a neutral country today. Trump’s campaign puts Americans first, which only makes this happen.

According to a report from anonymous sources with knowledge of the negotiations, Grenell and Jorge Rodriguez, the president of Venezuela’s National Assembly and ally of Nicolas Maduro, spoke about St Clair’s case on Tuesday.

A deal was reached to extend Chevron’s license to operate in Venezuela by 60 days, according to a report from Reuters and another news agency, Bloomberg.

In February, the Trump administration announced that it would revoke the permit because Venezuela had not upheld its commitment to fair elections. On May 27, the license was scheduled to expire.

The US Treasury and the Department of State will likely need to approve any extension.

The country’s economy is largely fueled by oil. However, Venezuela has been hit by an economic crisis since the mid-2010s, pushing even the most basic necessities, like food and medicine, beyond what some families can afford.

The UN claims that this and other alleged political repression have led to a nearly 7.9 million person eviction from Venezuela.

Venezuela made a commitment to electoral reforms in 2023 as part of the US-commended Barbados Agreement. Following the signing of the deal, then-US President Joe Biden eased restrictions on Venezuela’s oil industry.

However, Venezuela’s presidential election on July 28, 2024, received a lot of negative press for being illiberal. The electoral authorities did not provide any evidence of Maduro’s victory despite his and his supporters’ claims that he had won a third term.

Instead, the opposition coalition released voting records that it claimed demonstrated its candidate’s landslide victory. That led to widespread protests and a deadly law enforcement crackdown.

Trump had pursued a “maximum pressure” campaign against Maduro’s government during his first term in office, offering a $15 million bounty for information leading to the Venezuelan leader’s arrest from 2017 to 2021.

However, in his second term, Trump may need Venezuela’s assistance in achieving his “mass deportation” goals.

Trump has indicated a willingness to negotiate with Maduro since taking office in January. In Caracas’ capital, he even invited Grenell to meet with Maduro in person in late January. All Americans detained in the country were also provided with a copy of Grenell’s directive.

Grenell made it known that he was traveling with six Americans who had previously been held in Venezuela.

According to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, nine Americans were still in Venezuela’s custody in March.

Venezuela has started accepting deportation flights from the US, despite having previously rejected immigrants who had been taken out of the country.