US deports South Asians to South Sudan despite court order

WASHINGTON, United States

United States immigration officials have begun deporting about 12 South Asian migrants to South Sudan, according to a Tuesday court filing and media reports.

Immigration lawyers learned from a detention officer's email that a Burmese national, identified as "N.M." was "removed...to South Sudan," they wrote in a filing seeking the court's intervention and the return of the migrants.

A second migrant, a Vietnamese national identified as T.T.P. in the filing, "appears to have suffered the same fate" along with at least 10 others.

The removal violates an earlier order, the lawyers said, noting they had last filed an emergency motion on May 7, after media reports indicated immigration officials were seeking to deport N.M. and others to Libya and Saudia Arabia.

The court had sided with plaintiffs and "the men were ultimately transported back to an immigration detention center after remaining on a bus on the base's tarmac for three or four hours," the filing said.

The filing also noted that a flawed peace deal in South Sudan collapsed this week, and N.M. is being flown "into a country that is now returning to full-blown and catastrophic civil war."

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In early April, the Trump administration banned visas for South Sudanese nationals, as part of Presidend Donald Trump's ever-broadening anti-immigration platform.

The Republican president has said the United States faces an "invasion" by "foreign criminals."

In February, Trump invoked rarely used wartime legislation to fly some 250 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador without any court hearings, alleging they belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang, a charge that their families and lawyers deny.