A Massachusetts federal judge on Friday denied a request from eight migrants seeking to stop their deportation to South Sudan, despite emergency appeals and growing concerns over their safety.
According to the Justice Department, the men were scheduled to be deported at 7 p.m. ET on Friday after their emergency requests were reviewed by two courts on July 4 — a federal holiday when courts are typically closed, Reuters reported.
The migrants — originally from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Burma, Sudan, and Vietnam — filed new legal claims on Thursday after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston could not order the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to continue holding them.
Later on Friday, a separate federal judge, Randolph Moss in Washington, D.C., issued a temporary pause on the deportations. However, after reviewing the claims, Judge Murphy ultimately rejected their bid to remain in the U.S.
The deportations are the latest legal challenge to the Trump administration’s policy of removing undocumented immigrants to third-party nations under international agreements, rather than returning them to their countries of origin.
According to DHS, the eight men had been convicted of various crimes — including four convicted of murder — and had been detained on a U.S. military base in Djibouti for six weeks, rather than being returned to the U.S. while their cases were processed.
In their appeal, the migrants argued that deportation to South Sudan would violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” Their legal team pointed to the volatile conditions in South Sudan as posing a significant threat to their lives and safety.
During Friday’s hearing, Judge Moss expressed concern about the broader implications of such deportations. “It seems to me almost self-evident that the United States government cannot take human beings and send them to circumstances in which their physical well-being is at risk, simply either to punish them or send a signal to others,” he said.
Government lawyers pushed back, warning that blocking agreed-upon deportations could damage U.S. diplomatic efforts and make foreign governments less willing to cooperate on future migrant transfers.
The case marks another flashpoint in the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement strategy, which includes deals to send migrants to countries other than their own — a policy that continues to face legal scrutiny.
