Trump Administration’s Third-Country Deportation Practices Are Illegal, Federal Judge Rules

A federal judge ruled Wednesday that it’s illegal for the Trump administration to deport immigrants to countries they’re not from without advance notice or the opportunity to fight the deportation.

The administration brokered deals with other countries, mostly in Africa, to accept immigrants it can’t deport to their countries of origin. The Department of Homeland Security has carried out those deportations at times without telling the migrants until they’re in transit.

The expanded use of third-country removals became official policy of DHS in a March 30 memo, which said foreign governments had assured the immigrants wouldn’t be harmed. DHS said that justified the lack of notice or chance for immigrants to fight the removal.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy vacated the policy in an 81-page order Wednesday, declaring that immigrants have a right to meaningful notice before a third-country deportation and to start a process of fighting removal.

“The Department of Homeland Security has adopted a policy whereby it may take people and drop them off in parts unknown—in so-called ‘third countries’—and, ‘as long as the Department doesn’t already know that there’s someone standing there waiting to shoot . . . that’s fine,’” he wrote, citing comments from a hearing on the case. “It is not fine, nor is it legal.”

Murphy pointed to specific cases of third-country removals where DHS provided no notice or less than 24 hours, such as the secret January deportation of nine people to Cameroon. The African country’s authorities are detaining most of those immigrants until they agree to return to their home countries, The New York Times reported.

One of the anonymous plaintiffs, referred to as O.C.G., had been granted protection from being deported to Guatemala, his home country, but was deported to Mexico during the litigation.

“Defendants threw him on a bus to Mexico, where he had just been raped, and where he was quickly sent back to Guatemala, the place an immigration judge had just found he would likely be persecuted … and then Defendants lied about it,” Murphy wrote.

Murphy’s judgment won’t go into effect for 15 days because of the high likelihood of an appeal. Last year, the Supreme Court twice greenlit the administration’s third-country removal process in its shadow docket without opining on the merits of the arguments.

A DHS spokesperson said in a statement the agency is confident the Supreme Court will side with the administration again.

“If these activists judges had their way, aliens who are so uniquely barbaric that their own countries won’t take them back, including convicted murderers, child rapists and drug traffickers, would walk free on American streets,” the spokesperson said.

The class action suit was filed by the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and Human Rights First.

“This is a forceful statement from the court that the administration’s third country removal policy is unconstitutional,” the groups said in a statement. “The court recognized that the government continues to flout the due process rights of our class members by deporting them without notice or any opportunity to seek protection from persecution and/or torture.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include comment from DHS.