The White House violated a court order on deportations to third countries with a flight linked to the chaotic African nation of South Sudan, a federal judge said Wednesday, hours after the Trump administration said it had expelled eight immigrants convicted of violent crimes in the United States but refused to reveal where they would end up. The judge’s statement was a notably strong rebuke to the government’s attempts to manage immigration.
In an emergency hearing he called to address reports that immigrants had been sent to South Sudan, Judge Brian E. Murphy in Boston said the eight migrants aboard the plane were not given a meaningful opportunity to object that the deportation could put them in danger. Minutes before the hearing, administration officials accused “activist judges” of advocating the release of dangerous criminals.
“The department actions in this case are unquestionably in violation of this court’s order,” Murphy said Wednesday, arguing that the deportees didn’t have “meaningful opportunity” to object to being sent to South Sudan. The group was flown out of the United States just hours after getting notice, leaving them no chance to contact lawyers who could object in court.
Tag Archives: Mexico
Washington Examiner: Judge rules Trump administration violated court order with migrant flight to Africa
A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration violated an order he issued last month barring officials from deporting people to countries they are not from without first giving them an adequate chance to object to their removal.
The decision from Judge Brian E. Murphy came after a hearing in Boston to consider an emergency motion filed by lawyers on behalf of a group of men who they said were being deported and sent to South Sudan.
When the hearing began, officials from the Department of Homeland Security said eight immigrants were deported Tuesday on a flight. The officials did not say which country the men were being sent to.
Murphy said the government gave the deported men just over 24 hours’ notice that they were being removed from the country. He called the time frame “plainly insufficient.”
“The department’s actions in this case are unquestionably violative of this court’s order,” he said.
And King Donald gets bent all out of shape:
The Trump administration slammed Murphy as an “activist judge” after the hearing, accusing him of trying to protect “criminal illegal immigrant monsters.”
“A local judge in Massachusetts is trying to force the United States to bring back these uniquely barbaric monsters …
No, King Donald, they are human beings just like you and I, and they are entitled to their day in court.

Also here (no paywall):
The Atlantic: The Rushed, Blundering Effort to Send Deportees to Third Countries
Many of those sent to countries that aren’t their own are at heightened risk for abuse.
The Trump administration has acknowledged a new error in a case challenging its attempts to send deportees to any country that will take them. Another immigrant who had earned protected status was rushed out of the country and put in danger—and U.S. officials have offered little more than a shrug.
This time, the immigrant is a gay man from Guatemala who fled death threats and twice tried to seek refuge in the United States. First, he was denied and deported home. He tried again last year and says that while traveling through Mexico, he was held for ransom and sexually assaulted.
The man, identified in court documents as O.C.G., won his case in February when a U.S. immigration judge granted him withholding of removal, shielding him from deportation to Guatemala because of the risk of harm he faced there. The Trump administration promptly sent him to Mexico instead. Threatened with prolonged detention, O.C.G. left Mexico and went back to Guatemala—the country the judge had said he shouldn’t be sent to—and is now in hiding there.
The Trump administration originally claimed that O.C.G. did not express fear of being sent to Mexico, which would have potentially stopped his deportation. But on Friday, the government acknowledged that its claim was based on an erroneous data entry, and that it has no record to support the assertion. Then, over the weekend, the government compounded its mistake by briefly disclosing the man’s full name in court documents, violating confidentiality rules. The Atlantic is not publishing his name, because his lawyers argued in court that identifying him could put his life in danger, especially while he is in hiding.
It’s a long read but interesting.
Frankly, deporting people to third countries where they have no roots, no family, and don’t know the language is an abomination. So many of these people came to the U.S. looking for a better life for themselves and their families, and now we’re kicking them around the world like a bunch soccer balls.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/05/third-country-deportations/682857
New Republic: Transcript: Trump’s Threats to Defy Courts Suddenly Get More Dangerous
As Trump’s intent to override the courts gets more obvious, a legal commentator who closely observes MAGA lawlessness explains why the Trump-MAGA strategy here is darker than you thought.
This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
President Donald Trump is very unhappy with how things went at the Supreme Court when it comes to his effort to end birthright citizenship. He uncorked two angry epic tirades about the High Court, essentially putting it on notice that it had better rule his way on this and other matters coming before it or else. This may look like typical Trumpian bullying and threats, but we think there’s a game going on here that people are missing. It’s that Trump is, in a very real sense, playing chicken with the Supreme Court. He’s trying to bluff the justices into constraining themselves from putting limits on Trump’s power. We’re going to explore how this really works today with one of our favorite legal commentators, Matthew Seligman, a fellow at Stanford Law School.
Best to click on the link and read the dialogue:
https://newrepublic.com/article/195392/transcript-trump-threats-defy-courts-suddenly-get-dangerous
Raw Story: Trump’s henchmen are driving him to Supreme Court clash that he doesn’t care about: expert
President Donald Trump seems likely to stage a major showdown with the U.S. Supreme Court that a legal expert believes is an intentional effort to gather up authoritarian powers.
The president has been attacking judges who rule against him in legal challenges to his executive orders, and Stanford Law School’s Matthew Seligman told The New Republic’s Greg Sargent that Vice President JD [“Dunce”] Vance and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen [“Goebbels”] Miller were even more eager than Trump to break the courts.
“This implicates an important distinction between Trump as an optical authoritarian versus [“Dunce”] Vance and [“Goebbels”] Miller as substantive authoritarians,” Seligman said. “Trump wants the trappings of authoritarianism. He wants everybody to talk about how he’s the most powerful person, and he wants it to look like he’s in charge.”
“He wants the big parade,” …
But:
The vice president and Trump’s deputy chief of staff want to break the court’s opposition to Trump so the president carry out the “pure will of the people,” meaning the MAGA base, without bureaucratic obstacles, as Sargent put it.
“[“Goebbels”] Miller and [“Dunce”] Vance, I think, are much more committed to substantive authoritarianism,” Seligman agreed. “They actually want to exercise the power. They actually want to degrade the rule of law because they actually want to impose this particular vision — very dark vision — of America’s future on the country.
https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-supreme-court-2672130148
Talking Points Memo: Trump DOJ Admits It Used Bogus Info In Key Deportation Case
In an important federal case in Massachusetts over whether deportees can be sent to third countries rather than their countries of origin, the Trump administration admitted Friday to a grievous error and managed to compound it in the process.
It’s a bit complicated so let me boil it down to its essentials:
- Background: A gay Guatemalan national who had a U.S. immigration judge order barring his removal to his home country because he feared continued persecution was instead deported to Mexico in February by the Trump administration, partly on the grounds that he had told ICE that he didn’t fear being sent to Mexico. That was odd because the man, identified only by the initials O.C.G., had previously testified that he had been targeted and raped in Mexico, his lawyers say.
- Thursday: The Trump DOJ abruptly cancelled the scheduled deposition of an ICE official “whom Defendants previously identified as giving Plaintiff O.C.G. notice of deportation to Mexico and recording his response of lack of fear,” O.C.G.’s lawyers later told the court.
- Friday: The Trump DOJ filed a “Notice of Errata” admitting that during the judge’s ordered discovery in the case it had been unable to “identify any officer who asked O.C.G. whether he had a fear of return to Mexico.” A key factual element of the Trump administration’s case had evaporated. But it got worse …
- Sunday: Lawyers for the deportee – who is now in hiding in Guatemala because he fears persecution as a gay man – filed an emergency motion pointing out, among other things, that the government’s filing about its own error revealed the deportees name and other information, further jeopardizing his safety despite a court order anonymizing his identifying information.
Still with me? In the course of admitting its error, the Trump administration outed the gay man who it had wrongfully deported in the first place.
This is what happens when you staff up with a bunch of sycophantic suck-ups and bimbos instead of competent personnel!
Alternet: More than revenge: Here’s why Trump is really targeting his own former officials | Opinion
During President Donald Trump’s first three months in office, his administration has targeted dozens of former officials who criticized him or opposed his agenda.
In April 2025, Trump directed the Department of Justice to investigate two men who served in his first administration, Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs, because they spoke out against his policies and corrected his false claims about the 2020 election that he lost.
Further, Trump revoked the security clearances for advisers and retired generals who publicly criticized him during the 2024 election campaign.
On their face, such moves appear to be a coordinated campaign of personal retribution. But as political science scholars who study the origins of elected strongmen, we believe Trump’s use of the Justice Department to attack former officials who stood up to him isn’t just about revenge. It also deters current officials from defying Trump.
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But to carry out a power grab, incumbent leaders also need allies who will stay silent or, better yet, endorse their attempts to consolidate control.
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Recall that Trump only left office in January 2021 because key Republican officials defied his attempts to overturn an election he lost.
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In authoritarian contexts, loyalty is not an intrinsic quality. Authoritarian leaders do not necessarily select those with whom they have long work experience that leads to mutual trust.
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Instead, the challenge for authoritarian leaders is finding people to do their bidding. And the best people for this job are those who never would have earned their position in politics without the leader’s influence.
Unqualified appointees who can’t ascend to political power based on their merits have little choice but to stick with the leader. These people appear loyal, but only because their careers are tied to the leader staying in power.
Salon: “I feel like I’ve lost my country”: Americans who oppose Trump are now looking for the exits
As President Donald Trump ushers in his so-called “Golden Age” for the nation, some Americans are jumping ship. Yale University history professor Marci Shore is relieved to be one of them.
She and her husband, historian Timothy Snyder, had long been on the fence about leaving the United States, Shore told Salon, with professorships at the University of Toronto available to them for at least two years should they have wished to take them. Trump’s reelection in November and the proverbial smoke before the fire in the immediate aftermath made it clear to her that now was the time to pull the trigger.
“I felt like this country had everything right in front of them, and people chose this — a lot of people chose this, and that was heartbreaking,” she said. “And I also felt like, ‘I don’t want to come back to this.’ I don’t want to, and maybe I’m not devoted enough. Maybe I’m not enough of a patriot. But I felt like, ‘I don’t want this. I don’t want this for my kids. I don’t want this environment.'”
Shore is a part of a small but burgeoning group of Americans who have lost faith in their country since Trump’s reclaimed the presidency — who have lost hope that a good future is still possible there …
Also here:
Raw Story: DHS bid to fix ‘crucial misstatement’ in court causes violation of judge’s order
This was summed up by legal expert Roger Parloff, who said, “In correcting an earlier (crucial) misstatement about Guatemalan OCG, whom government removed to Mexico and who is now hiding in Guatemala due to fear of persecution, government inadvertently identified OCG’s name, violating court order and heightening the danger OCG’s in.”
Parloff added, “Complicated background, but OCG is a name plaintiff in the DVD class action, which is trying to prevent aliens from being removed to 3d countries without an opportunity to raise and litigate claims of fear of persecution and torture.”
DHS today is just a bunch of total f*ck*ps!
https://www.rawstory.com/dhs-fix-crucial-misstatement-mexico
Independent: Police admit they mistakenly pulled over a college student. But she still faces deportation
When police in Dalton, Georgia pulled over Ximena Arias-Cristobal, officers accused the 19-year-old college student of making an illegal right turn at a red light.
She told officers she didn’t have her international driver’s license on her, according to a police report, and she was taken into custody.
Then she was moved to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center roughly four hours away, and now she faces the possibility of being removed from the country along with her family.
But local police this week admitted the officers made a mistake.
After a review of dash cam footage from the traffic stop on May 5, “it was determined that Ms. Arias-Cristobal’s vehicle appeared similar to the offending vehicle but was not the vehicle that made an improper turn,” according to a statement from the Dalton Police Department.
Police and prosecutors dismissed the charges against her, but Donald Trump’s administration intends to remove her from the United States, where she has lived since she was four years old.
Arias-Cristobal’s parents did not have legal permission to enter the United States from Mexico in 2010 when she was a toddler, and she did not qualify for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which ended the year before her family entered the country, according to family friends.