The Trump administration for months has obliquely warned judges their immigration rulings were messing with touchy foreign policy negotiations. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has now delivered the goods.
In a startling filing with a federal court, filed in a case in which he is pondering ordering the potential un-deportation of murderers and sex offenders, Mr. Rubio said U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy may have already fueled a civil war in Libya, disrupted U.S. counterterrorism operations in eastern Africa and dented America’s ability to deliver humanitarian aid in that region.
A senior official at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement also weighed in with his own filing saying the judge is meddling in complex immigration matters that require both speed and precision.
Judge Murphy, a Biden appointee who sits in Massachusetts, became the latest federal judge to pick up the banner of illegal immigrants’ “due process” rights — and the latest to earn the ire of the Trump administration.
He imposed strict limits that he thought would have blocked a flight of high-level deportees that went last week to South Sudan.
After the flight, the judge said his orders had been defied and he demanded the government find a way to hold hearings for the eight deportees — most of them sex offenders or murderers — to determine if they needed to be un-deported. He said he feared their right to object to the deportation had been violated.
“Based on what I have learned, I don’t see how anybody could say these individuals had a meaningful opportunity to object,” Judge Murphy said.
Trump officials rushed to vilify Judge Murphy.
The Department of Homeland Security introduced into the case files detailed criminal histories of the eight men on the plane, including a Laotian man who murdered a 64-year-old German tourist; a Mexican man who stabbed his roommate to death and has been tied to a gang; and a Burmese man who was convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting a child starting when the victim was 7 years old, and up to when she was 12.
Homeland Security said the crimes were so “barbaric” that their own home countries had refused to take them back.
Judge Murphy follows Judge James Boasberg in Washington, who first tried to halt three deportation flights to El Salvador in March, and U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland, who has ordered the un-deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
In both of those cases the administration has said the judges were meddling in touchy foreign affairs, while providing scant details.
Mr. Rubio took the gloves off Friday. The secretary of state said the judge’s orders meant that the high-level deportees on the plane were required to temporarily remain at America’s only African military base, in Djibouti. That created a wrinkle with that nation’s government and interfered with ongoing counter-terrorism operations, Mr. Rubio said.
And in South Sudan, the judge’s rulings have upended the careful diplomacy that had gotten that country to accept the deportees in the first place — including one of its own citizens who was on the plane. And the ramifications run deeper still.
Mr. Rubio said South Sudan is a critical location for U.S. humanitarian relief, and anything that hurts cooperation with that government hurts those efforts.
“It is almost certain the court’s interjection will result in delayed or significantly reduced humanitarian efforts,” Mr. Rubio said.
He also said Libya, which had been secretly negotiating with the U.S. to take deportees, has now had to publicly reject the idea. And the judge’s action emboldened rebel forces in Libya, igniting the worst street fighting in three years in the capital, Tripoli, Mr. Rubio said.
The unrest also set back negotiations on an energy deal between Libya and a U.S. company, Mr. Rubio said.
In another court filing Friday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the judge’s ruling will cost the government money because it gives some illegal immigrants new rights of appeal, meaning they have to be held in custody for at least 25 days longer.
“The process imposed by the court creates a vicious cycle that would require ICE to relitigate enforceable removal orders when attempting to remove aliens who have no right to remain in the United States, but hail from countries who refuse to cooperate with the acceptance of their criminal citizens,” said Garrett Ripa, a senior ICE official.
Mr. Ripa also said ICE has to get travel documents for every deportee flown out, and they are only good for a short period of time. The judge’s ordered delays could force ICE to restart the process, “wasting” time and money — or forcing “dangerous criminals” to be released into communities.
Judge Murphy has questioned ICE’s operations, pointing to the agency’s self-admitted “error” that led to a Guatemalan man being deported to Mexico without determining if it was safe for him.
The judge on Friday ordered the U.S. to un-deport the man, identified in court documents by initials OCG.
“Defendants are hereby ordered to take all immediate steps, including coordinating with plaintiffs’ counsel, to facilitate the return of OCG to the United States,” Judge Murphy wrote.
OCG had been kidnapped and raped in Mexico before.
ICE initially told the judge he’d been asked if he feared being sent back there and he said he did not. But ICE later admitted it could not find any evidence OCG was actually asked, despite a notation in his file that it had happened.
