Judge warns Trump administration against Libya deportations

U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Boston, writing in a swift, stern response to an emergency request from lawyers for a number of immigrants, said he had already barred the Department of Homeland Security from deporting someone to a third country without having given them a chance to challenge the removal and seek protection in the United States.

Lawyers representing immigrants with final deportation orders as part of a class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration had asked Murphy for the emergency order earlier Wednesday, after reports indicated that U.S. immigration officers were preparing to deport people from Vietnam, Laos and the Philippines to Libya. The troubled North African nation is “notorious for its human rights violations, especially with respect to migrant residents,” their emergency motion says.

“If there is any doubt — the Court sees none — the allegedly imminent removals, as reported by news agencies and as Plaintiffs seek to corroborate with class-member accounts and public information, would clearly violate this Court’s Order,” Murphy wrote in his decision.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security or the Defense Department, the agency preparing to transport the immigrants.

Asked about the reports of a deportation flight to Libya, President Donald Trump said he did not know about it and referred the reporter who asked the question to the Department of Homeland Security.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, however, derided the judge’s ruling. “Another judge puts himself in charge of the Pentagon,” he wrote on social media. “This is a judicial coup.”

The judge’s orders come as the Trump administration attempts to fulfill the president’s campaign promises to deport the largest number of immigrants in U.S. history, but advocates for immigrants allege that the government’s tactics violate court orders — as well as federal laws — and put immigrants in danger.

In recent months, Trump officials have deported immigrants from Venezuela to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Officials sent a Salvadoran man to the same prison even though a judge’s previous order forbade it. And after Murphy issued rulings in March and April that barred DHS from deporting immigrants to countries where they were not citizens without a chance to contest the action, the Pentagon instead transported immigrants from Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba to third countries, including El Salvador, court records show.

The Defense Department is not a defendant in the case, and DHS said the military carried out the removals without its direction or knowledge. But Murphy ruled in late April, and again Wednesday, that DHS may not evade its responsibilities to provide immigrants due process by turning enforcement over to other agencies.

In his April 18 preliminary injunction, which detailed the steps the government should follow before deporting someone to a third country, Murphy rebuked the government’s lawyers for arguing that it could deport someone without due process to a place where they might face harm, saying that doing so violated the Constitution.

“This case presents a simple question: Before the United States forcibly sends someone to a country other than their country of origin, must that person be told where they are going and be given a chance to tell the United States that they might be killed if sent there?” he wrote. Lawyers for the Trump administration said they could, he wrote, but he added: “All nine sitting justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, the Assistant Solicitor General of the United States, Congress, common sense, basic decency, and this Court all disagree.”

Before deporting someone to a third country, the judge’s order said, DHS must provide the detainee and their lawyer with written notice identifying the country in a language they understand and provide a “meaningful” chance for them to challenge the removal, among other requirements.

Given his previous orders, on Wednesday Murphy said his ruling on Libya and Saudi Arabia was more of a clarification — one he said he should not have had to make because he had already laid out the proper procedures last month.

The judge’s declaration followed a frantic 24 hours during which lawyers for the potential deportees scrambled to confirm media reports indicating that the migrants were being readied for removal to Libya via the U.S. military. At the Pentagon, officials appeared uncertain whether such an action was imminent, and several said they had been told to refer questions about the possibility to the White House.

Any removal of U.S. deportees to Libya would mark a significant expansion of the Trump administration’s already aggressive deportation program, which has sent hundreds of people to countries in Latin America and far smaller numbers to Africa and Central Asia, despite highly charged legal challenges in U.S. courts.

Libya’s rival governments, meanwhile, each issued sharp public statements indicating that they would reject any deportations from the United States.

“Libya refuses to be a destination for the deportation of migrants under any pretext,” Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, prime minister for the government based in Tripoli, wrote on social media Wednesday, adding that any agreements made by “illegitimate entities” do not bind the Libyan state.

A separate government that controls eastern Libya, led by the general-turned-warlord Khalifa Hifter, also released a statement rejecting the idea of accepting deportees from the United States.

Though united in denying the reports, supporters of the two governments each accused the other on social media of backing the U.S. deportations.

Libya would mark a radically different destination for U.S. deportations. The State Department advises against all travel there, citing the risk of “crime, terrorism, unexploded land mines, civil unrest, kidnapping, and armed conflict.”

The country’s location on the Mediterranean Sea has given it a controversial role as a migration transit hub in recent years. Last year, the State Department called conditions in Libyan prisons and detention facilities “harsh and life-threatening” and noted that immigrants had no access to courts or due process.

Human rights groups have strongly criticized the situation for migrants returned to Libya, with Amnesty International describing it as “hellish” in 2022.

The country’s political landscape is deeply divided and extremely fragile, battered by more than a decade of war and lacking a central political authority.

The U.N.-backed Government of National Accord rules part of the country from the capital of Tripoli. Hifter, a Libyan American, leads a coalition of factions and militias called the Libyan National Army. They have control of large swaths of the country’s east, including much of the country’s oil fields.

Saddam Hifter, the son of Khalifa, visited Washington last week. Hifter met with State Department officials including senior adviser Massad Boulos, who is the father-in-law of Tiffany Trump, according to a statement from the department.

At the time, administration officials said their meeting did not include discussion of deportations but focused on commercial opportunities related to Libya’s oil and gas sector.

Natalie Allison contributed to this report