(Adnkronos) – Eight migrants and about ten ICE agents have been stuck in Djibouti for over two weeks after a federal judge stopped their deportation to South Sudan. Judge Brian Murphy’s ruling in Boston forced the plane to turn back, but instead of bringing the migrants back to the US, the Trump administration landed the military aircraft at the US military base of Camp Lemonnier, where the migrants are being held in a container converted into a detention center.
This was announced by Melissa Harper, a senior ICE official, in response to the judge’s request for an update on the situation. In his ruling, the judge determined that the migrants – who are originally from Cuba, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, and Mexico – could not be deported to a third country without having had the opportunity to apply for asylum. According to the motion filed by Harper, migrants and agents are at risk of contracting malaria and being hit by missiles from nearby Yemen, the Washington Post reported today.
The Trump administration’s line – which has asked the Supreme Court to overturn Murphy’s ruling, arguing that the migrants were being deported to third countries because their crimes were “so monstrous and barbaric” that their countries of origin would not want them – is that Murphy’s ruling is putting at risk the small group of ICE agents, who left Washington unequipped to deal with the stay in Djibouti, and who “constantly guard a group of dangerous criminals, under the threat of missile attacks and health hazards.”
For their part, defense attorneys express “growing concern for the conditions of the detainees” who are in chains, recalling that it is the Department of Homeland Security that determines this dangerous situation by not bringing the migrants back to the US.
Furthermore, Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum stated in recent weeks that the US government did not inform Mexico of the deportation to Djibouti of Jesus Munoz Gutierrez, convicted 20 years ago of murder in Florida, stating that if the US had followed the repatriation protocol, Gutierrez would have been detained upon returning to Mexico.
