A federal judge on Wednesday said the Trump administration violated a court order when it put a group of migrants on a plane to war-torn South Sudan without giving them a proper chance to challenge their removal. It’s the latest example of the administration breaking the law in carrying out Donald Trump’s agenda.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts last month had ordered the government to apply those safeguards before sending people to countries they aren’t from, or so-called third countries. Murphy said at a Wednesday hearing that the administration had “unquestionably” violated his order with Tuesday’s flight. The Biden appointee raised the possibility of contempt but didn’t make a final decision about that at the hearing.
Murphy had issued a separate order on Tuesday for the government 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.”
Murphy isn’t the first judge to call out the government’s illegal behavior when it comes to immigration cases, specifically. In a case with similar themes in Washington, D.C., U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said last month that there’s probable cause to find contempt for violating his order over deportation flights to El Salvador in March. Those contempt-related proceedings are currently tied up in D.C.’s federal appeals court.
And in one of multiple cases in which the government conducted an illegal deportation that it’s resisting fixing, a federal appeals court judge wrote Monday, “As is becoming far too common, we are confronted again with the efforts of the Executive Branch to set aside the rule of law in pursuit of its goals.” The judge continued, “It is the duty of courts to stand as a bulwark against the political tides that seek to override constitutional protections and fundamental principles of law, even in the name of noble ends like public safety.” Murphy is thus the latest judge attempting to stand as a bulwark — although, as with seemingly all of these cases, the ultimate consequences for officials who defy the law remain to be seen. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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