South Sudan says US deportees are in government’s care

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NAIROBI (Reuters) -South Sudan said on Tuesday that eight migrants deported to the African nation by the Trump administration were currently in the care of the authorities in Juba after they lost a legal battle to halt their transfer to the politically unstable country.

The men, who had been in U.S. custody for more than a month at a military base in Djibouti, were deported on Friday and arrived in South Sudan’s capital on Saturday, the U.S. government and two officials at Juba airport said.

The men are undergoing screening in accordance with South Sudanese laws and applicable international norms, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement, adding that the Juba government had responded to the U.S. request to take in the migrants “as a gesture of goodwill.”

The fate of the migrants had become a flashpoint in the fight over the legality of President Donald Trump’s campaign to deter immigration through high-profile deportations to “third countries” where migrants say they face safety concerns.

The eight men, who, according to their lawyers, are from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Sudan, and Vietnam, had argued their deportations to South Sudan would violate the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

(Reporting by Ammu Kannampilly; Editing by Rod Nickel)