Court rejects Trump bid to swiftly deport migrants to countries not their own

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By Nate Raymond

BOSTON (Reuters) -The Trump administration lost a bid on Friday to lift a judge’s order barring it from swiftly deporting migrants to countries other than their own including Libya and El Salvador without first hearing their concerns about their safety.

The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to put on hold a judge’s injunction that aimed to ensure that migrants have an opportunity to raise claims they might be persecuted, tortured or killed if they are deported to countries not previously identified in their immigration proceedings.

The U.S. Department of Justice argued that the nationwide injunction U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy issued on April 18 has prevented thousands of pending deportation orders from being carried out and has harmed President Donald Trump’s ability to negotiate the removal of migrants to other countries.

The judge, an appointee of Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, issued that injunction after previously temporarily blocking the administration from fast-tracking deportations of migrants who in some cases have legal protections preventing them from being sent back to their countries of origin.

But a three-judge panel on Friday said it had “concerns” with new guidance the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued governing such deportations and “the irreparable harm that will result from wrongful removals in this context.”

Trina Realmuto, a lawyer at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance representing a group of migrants in the case, said the ruling keeps in place critical protections for migrants facing possible deportation to a third country.

“These protections are especially important given that we now know that just last week the government was actively seeking to deport people to Libya,” Realmuto said in a statement.

The Departments of Homeland Security and Justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In February, the Department of Homeland Security instructed immigration officers to review cases of people granted protections against being removed to their home countries to see if they could be re-detained and sent to a third country.

Immigrant rights groups sued on behalf of a group of migrants seeking to prevent their rapid deportation to newly identified locales.

Murphy, in siding with them, said they were owed due process under the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment to address concerns they might have that they could be deported to countries where they might be tortured.

Murphy has since modified his injunction to guard against the possibility of DHS ceding control of migrants to other agencies to carry out rapid deportations, after the administration took the position that the U.S. Department of Defense was not covered by his orders.

It made that argument after acknowledging the Defense Department flew four Venezuelans held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to El Salvador after Murphy’s initial ruling.

After Reuters last week reported that the U.S. military could deport a group of migrants for the first time to Libya, Murphy issued an order saying such removals would “clearly violate” his ruling.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Chris Reese, Alexia Garamfalvi and Diane Craft)