President Trump’s efforts to deport migrants to places other than their country of origin hit a new roadblock on Friday, when a federal judge issued a temporary order requiring the administration to give migrants an opportunity to contest their removal on the grounds that they might be at risk of persecution or torture.
U.S. District Court Judge Brian E. Murphy, who sits in Boston, ordered the government to give migrants a chance to contest their removal to a so-called third country under a federal law that limits deportations to places where the deportees’ “life or freedom would be threatened.” He also cited a United Nations treaty against torture.
The Trump administration has struck deals with Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala, Mexico and El Salvador as part of its efforts to remove people who are difficult to deport to their home countries. Hundreds of migrants from countries in Africa and Asia, for instance, have been deported to Panama, a country those migrants had no ties to.
In prior administrations, strained diplomatic relationships and difficulties with paperwork have made it hard to deport large numbers of people to certain countries.
The new order is limited to migrants who have a “final order of removal,” meaning their case has already been considered by an immigration court. The administration has also claimed it has the authority to circumvent much of that process using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which it has used to remove more than 200 Venezuelans from the United States to El Salvador. Another judge has blocked that use of the law, which only applies during wartime. On Friday, the administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
The plaintiffs in the case are four migrants, identified only by their initials, who are citizens of Cuba, Honduras, Ecuador and Guatemala. Two are in the United States and fear they will be deported when they arrive for upcoming check-ins with immigration authorities. A third is being held at a county prison in Massachusetts; the fourth “remains in hiding in Guatemala,” a country where a U.S. immigration judge “found it was more likely than not that he would be persecuted,” according to the complaint.
Their lawsuit claims that the administration’s deportation policies violate the Constitution’s guarantee to due process, and the Administrative Procedure Act.
Muneer Ahmad, a professor at Yale Law School who represents immigrants as part of the school’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, called the decision “important,” adding that it would slow what he called “the Trump administration’s efforts to bum-rush immigrants out of the country in disregard of these core legal obligations to protect against torture or persecution.”
Judge Murphy has scheduled a hearing for April 10 to consider whether to issue a preliminary injunction, which would be more lasting than Friday’s temporary restraining order.
Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, noted that the case was one of a series targeting the Trump administration’s lightning-fast efforts to deport migrants.
“This will affect the administration’s ability to carry out more high-profile removals to third countries, like those to Panama, Costa Rica and El Salvador,” she said.
Tim Balk contributed reporting from New York.
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