Judge accuses Trump administration of creating chaos for migrants held in Djibouti

By Katelyn Polantz, Priscilla Alvarez and Lauren Chadwick, CNN

(CNN) — A federal judge, in his latest finding that immigrant detainees the US intended to send to South Sudan aren’t being given due process, told the Trump administration he believes it is manufacturing chaos and trying to evade court orders.

The latest written order from Judge Brian Murphy of the District Court in Massachusetts comes after the Trump administration asked the judge to revisit an earlier ruling he made that would have allowed the detainees more proceedings to object to their deportation.

Fewer than 10 migrants are being held in US custody at a military base in Djibouti, according to the Trump administration. The judge on Monday said he wouldn’t reconsider or delay an earlier ruling, which he noted Justice Department lawyers had helped him shape, on giving the detainees some due process proceedings while they are held there.

“It turns out that having immigration proceedings on another continent is harder and more logistically cumbersome than Defendants anticipated. However, the Court never said that Defendants had to convert their foreign military base into an immigration facility; it only left that as an option, again, at Defendants’ request,” Murphy wrote in a 17-page order issued Monday night. “From this course of conduct, it is hard to come to any conclusion other than that Defendants invite lack of clarity as a means of evasion.”

Murphy, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden, is considering potentially holding administration officials in contempt of court for violation of his orders, in one of the latest major clashes between a judge and the Trump administration over immigration and due process.

CNN reached out to the Department of Homeland Security about the judge’s latest order but did not receive an immediate response.

Lawyers for the migrants first filed the case in late March, alleging that the Trump administration was removing migrants from the US to third countries without providing them the opportunity to show they were at “risk of persecution or torture” there. The court said the government cannot send a noncitizen “to a country where they are likely to be tortured” under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

The court battle prompted Murphy’s emergency intervention this month, when some detainees were told they were being sent to South Sudan, a country on the cusp of another civil war. Fewer than 17 hours later, they were put on a plane and flown out of the US.

The detainees had essentially no opportunity to reach their lawyers or families, nor did they have “meaningful opportunity … to present fear-based claims,” the judge found on Monday.

Murphy acknowledged the migrants had criminal histories but said “that does not change due process.”

He added in the order on Monday that he has refrained from issuing orders that would micromanage the executive branch’s agencies.

Last week, Murphy had ordered the Trump administration “to maintain custody and control of class members currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country, to ensure the practical feasibility of return if the Court finds that such removals were unlawful.”

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