Judge Rips Trump in Scathing Order on South Sudan Deportations
Federal Judge Brian Murphy lambasted the Trump administration for “manufacturing the very chaos they decry” in a scathing Monday evening order.
This comes after the Department of Homeland Security deported six men to South Sudan in a hurried move that Murphy identified as a clear violation of his previous preliminary injunction, which required DHS to give “meaningful” notice before deporting someone to an unfamiliar country, particularly an “unstable” one, without due process.
“Defendants have mischaracterized this Court’s order, while at the same time manufacturing the very chaos they decry,” Murphy wrote in his Monday order.
“The court recognizes that the class members at issue here have criminal histories,” he continued “But that does not change due process.… The court treats its obligation to these principles with the seriousness that anyone committed to the rule of law should understand.”
Murphy noted that he initially accepted the administration’s own recommendation to keep the men at a U.S. military base in Djibouti rather than send them to South Sudan. But days later, Trump lied about the judge’s order, making it seem as if Murphy had required the men to stay in Djibouti.
“A Federal Judge in Boston, who knew absolutely nothing about the situation, or anything else, has ordered that EIGHT of the most violent criminals on Earth curtail their journey to South Sudan, and instead remain in Djibouti,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday. “He would not allow these monsters to proceed to their final destination. This is not the premise under which I was elected President, which was to PROTECT our Nation. The Judges are absolutely out of control, they’re hurting our Country, and they know nothing about particular situations, or what they are doing—And this must change, IMMEDIATELY!”
This was a complete lie, according to Murphy.
“The court never said that defendants had to convert their foreign military base into an immigration facility,” he wrote in the memo. “It only left that as an option, again, at defendants’ request.”