Tag Archives: Myanmar

Fresno Bee: Fresno southeast Asians detained at ICE check-ins, advocates say

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Southeast Asian residents are being detained at ICE check-ins in Fresno, advocates and an immigration lawyer say. In some cases, refugees are being deported to countries where they’ve never lived, they say.

It’s not immediately clear how many members from Fresno’s Southeast Asian community have been detained at ICE check-ins and deported since President Donald Trump launched what he says will be the largest deportation campaign in history. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to request for comment on this story.

Many of these individuals are refugees with minor criminal records from years ago that could subject them to deportation, advocates say. But they weren’t deported earlier because, as refugees, the countries they were born in don’t recognize their citizenship. Some were born in refugee camps and are considered stateless. Or, the U.S. didn’t have an agreement in place to deport them to their home countries. In lieu of deportation, they were required to have regular check-ins with ICE.

While these check-ins were a longstanding practice, now, some are of these people are being detained and forced to return to countries they and their families were forced to flee due to political persecution, war and genocide.

Fresno has a large Southeast Asian community, from countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos. It’s also home to the second largest concentrations of Hmong people nationwide, many descendants of U.S. allies during the Vietnam War.

“A lot of them are refugees or children of these veterans (and) have committed a senseless crime when they were teenagers,” said Pao Yang, president and CEO of The Fresno Center. “And then now you’re sending these children of these veterans that fought with the U.S. back to a country that they were fighting against with you.”

During the first Trump administration, the government tried to put pressure on Southeast Asian countries to receive people with deportation orders to those countries. Those efforts have ramped up this year during Trump’s second term, said Tilman Jacobs, an immigrants rights supervising attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, the nation’s oldest Asian American civil rights advocacy group.

“These communities are being impacted in a way that we haven’t seen before,” Jacobs said. Individuals have been deported from ICE check-ins in Fresno, he said, though he didn’t have an estimate on how many had been detained.

Yang, the Fresno Center CEO, said he also knows of “many” Fresno clients that have been detained and transferred to the Golden State Annex ICE detention center in McFarland, where they are held as they await next steps in their immigration cases.

As of late August, Christine Barker, executive director of the refugee-serving nonprofit, Fresno Immigrant and Refugee Ministries, knew of at least five individuals of Laotian or Cambodian descent being detained at their ICE check-ins in Fresno.

“I also know from some of their family members, when they got to [the Golden State Annex ICE detention center in] McFarland, they were like, ‘there’s a lot of Asian people here,” she said.

While California’s Southeast Asian communities have experienced more sporadic immigration enforcement, other states such as Michigan and Minnesota have seen more high-profile enforcement activity. More than 150 Southeast Asians have been deported from Minnesota since May, according to an Aug. 18 report in the Minnesota Reformer.

Jacobs said the practice of detaining people at ICE check-ins was more common during the first five or six months of the administration, but he hasn’t seen as much of it recently in California.

“That doesn’t mean it’s not going to continue happening,” he said. “It’s definitely a real risk. But I also don’t want to overstate it.”

Hmong people are an ethnic group originating from China and that have their own language and culture. Because of decades of persecution by the Chinese government over their cultural and spiritual practices, the Hmong have constantly migrated to Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar. In the early 1960s, the CIA recruited Hmong people to help fight against North Vietnam and the communist party in Laos, known as the Pathet Lao. The operation, also known as The Secret War, lasted from 1962 to 1975. When the Pathet Lao took over Laos’s governance, thousands of Hmong and Laotian people sought refuge in the United States in 1975.

Barker said what’s happening to these refugees is a violation of human rights.

“When you’re a refugee, the world is supposed to protect you from ever having to return to the country you fled,” she said. “These are uncles, these are grandpas, these are old, old convictions from the 80s and the 90s.”

Deported to Laos, Cambodia

Families, lawyers and nonprofits are scrambling to support individuals that have been deported to countries such as Laos and Cambodia.

Thao Ha, runs Collective Freedom, an organization that supports “justice-impacted” individuals from Southeast Asian communities. In recent months, her organization has had to pivot to provide support on the ground in Laos and is helping families track down their deported loved ones.

“We didn’t think they were going to go this hard, this fast, or at all,” she said. The community had assumptions that people couldn’t get deported to Laos, or that only a few here and there would be deported, Ha said.

Laos doesn’t have a formal repatriation agreement with the U.S., according to the Asian Law Caucus. But the Trump administration has pressured Laos to accept deportees — including people who were not born in the country and whose parents fled the country — by threatening to withhold business and tourist visas to Lao citizens.

When people are deported to Laos, they are detained upon entry in Laos for multiple weeks, advocates say. Those with a local sponsor are released more quickly. Those who don’t have a sponsor will be detained longer until the government can process them.

Ha said there’s no official repatriation process in Laos, meaning there’s little infrastructure to help people with housing, work, or cultural adjustment.

“There’s not an agency, so to speak,” Ha said. “We’re just trying to rapid response and mutual aid at this point.” Several groups have “popped up” to try to fill the gaps, but none are formal non-governmental organizations.

The “number one challenge” for people with their loved ones being deported to Laos is that they don’t have family there, Ha said. “If they don’t have family and don’t have a sponsor, where do they go? What do they do? Are they just roaming the streets?”

For some deported to Laos, especially those born in refugee camps, they have no relationship to the country, language skills or community knowledge. “For Hmong folks who grew up in the U.S., they may never learn Lao,” Barker said.

Barker also said there used to be programs to help people from the Khmer Indigenous ethnic group acculturate in Cambodia.

“Those programs disappeared when USAID was gutted,” she said.

Fleeing war, genocide, persecution

Jacobs of the Asian Law Caucus said his organization works with Southeast Asian refugees who are facing pending deportation, oftentimes from very old convictions.

“Many of the people that we work with have consistently followed all of those terms with their release and continue to do so,” Jacobs said. “And I know that there is a lot of anxiety right now around these check-ins.”

Many of the organization’s clients were fleeing civil war, genocide and persecution and carry memories of trauma associated with the unfamiliar country, he said.

“In many cases, there are countries that don’t really want to receive people who left so long ago, and what a lot of them are facing in real terms, is statelessness where they’re not recognized as citizens of those countries,” he said.

For example, he said, Hmong people in Laos are given some kind of residency status, but they are not citizens. And this sense of not belonging can have lingering legal, emotional and psychological impact.

Yang said many in the Southeast Asian immigrant community are quiet and scared because many come from a country where the government targets people. Earlier this year, there was a rush of people seeking legal services, but now, especially after the start of the June immigration crackdown in Los Angeles, he’s noticed a “huge drop” in people seeking assistance.

“We have a lot of folks, even legal resident aliens, that are in hiding, that are afraid,” he said.

Fresno southeast Asians detained at ICE check-ins, advocates say
“These communities are being impacted in a way that we haven’t seen before,” said immigration attorney Tilman Jacobs of the Asian Law Caucus

https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article312072747.html

Independent: Trump asks Supreme Court to approve his tariffs after warning US would be ‘destroyed’ if they don’t go ahead

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President demands highest court weigh in on his use of International Emergency Economic Powers Act 1977 to slap hefty levies on imported goods

Donald Trump has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling that the basis for his “reciprocal tariffs” policy was not legal, having warned the country would be “destroyed” without it.

The Court of Appeals ruled on Friday in agreement with a May finding by the Court of International Trade that the president had overstepped his authority by invoking a law known as the International Emergency Economic Powers Act 1977 to place hefty levies on goods imported from America’s trading partners.

Trump was incensed by the decision, insisting it was “highly partisan” and “would literally destroy the United States of America.”

Now, the administration has asked the conservative-majority Supreme Court to decide whether to take up the case by September 10, despite its new term not beginning until October 6, with a view to hearing arguments in November.

“The stakes in this case could not be higher,” Solicitor General D John Sauer wrote in his filing. “The president and his cabinet officials have determined that the tariffs are promoting peace and unprecedented economic prosperity, and that the denial of tariff authority would expose our nation to trade retaliation without effective defenses and thrust America back to the brink of economic catastrophe.”

Attorneys representing small businesses challenging the tariff program said they were not opposed to the Supreme Court hearing the matter and said, on the contrary, they were confident their arguments would prevail.

“These unlawful tariffs are inflicting serious harm on small businesses and jeopardizing their survival,” said Jeffrey Schwab of Liberty Justice Center. “We hope for a prompt resolution of this case for our clients.”

Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs in the White House Rose Garden on April 2, invoking the IEEPA to set a 10 percent baseline tax on all imports and even higher taxes on goods being shipped from nearly every one of America’s trading partners, with China, Canada and Mexico among those hardest hit.

However, his announcement sent shockwaves through the world’s stock markets as investors panicked over their likely economic consequences, eventually forcing Trump into a rethink. He duly announced a week later that the implementation of the tariffs would be suspended for 90 days, a deadline that was eventually extended until August.

Administration officials led by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick used the intervening summer months to attempt to broker custom deals with other countries but only succeeded in securing a handful of agreements, notably with the U.K. and Vietnam.

A revised list of tariffs that came into effect on August 7 saw India (51 percent), Syria (41 percent), Laos (40 percent), Myanmar (4o percent) and Switzerland (39 percent) particularly hard done by.

Then, last week, the Court of Appeals agreed with two challenges, one brought by the small businesses and another by 12 states, to rule in a seven-four majority decision that the president’s power to regulate imports under the law does not include the power to impose tariffs.

“It seems unlikely that Congress intended, in enacting IEEPA, to depart from its past practice and grant the president unlimited authority to impose tariffs,” the justices wrote in their decision.

They added that U.S. law “bestows significant authority on the president to undertake a number of actions in response to a declared national emergency, but none of these actions explicitly include the power to impose tariffs, duties, or the like, or the power to tax.”

The Independent is the world’s most free-thinking news brand, providing global news, commentary and analysis for the independently-minded. We have grown a huge, global readership of independently minded individuals, who value our trusted voice and commitment to positive change. Our mission, making change happen, has never been as important as it is today.

Bubba dearest,

Your tariffs are illegal.

You had no legal authority to levy them.

They gotta go.

You gotta go, too.

Period.

Stop.

End of story.

Trump asks Supreme Court to approve his tariffs program after legal setbacks
President demands highest court weigh in on his use of International Emergency Economic Powers Act 1977 to slap hefty levies on imported goods

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-supreme-court-tariffs-appeal-b2819975.html

Law & Crime: ‘Violates the First Amendment’: Judge bars Trump admin from imposing sanctions on US human rights advocates who work for international court

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A federal judge in Maine on Friday barred the Trump administration from enforcing sanctions on two U.S. citizens and human rights advocates who work with the International Criminal Court (ICC).

On April 11, Matthew Smith and Akila Radhakrishnan, a human rights nonprofit leader and lawyer, respectively, filed a 39-page lawsuit against President Donald Trump and several other members of his administration over an executive order that imposes sanctions on the ICC, prohibits certain interactions with designated ICC officials, and threatens both civil and criminal penalties for any such violations.

The lawsuit was premised on the idea that the sanctions “violate their First Amendment rights, and those of others like them, by prohibiting their constitutionally protected speech.” The plaintiffs, in late April, requested a preliminary injunction barring the government “from imposing civil or criminal penalties on them” for “provision of speech-based services” to the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP).

Now, U.S. District Judge Nancy Torresen, a Barack Obama appointee, has granted that requested relief in a 16-page order.

“[T]he Executive Order appears to burden substantially more speech than necessary,” the judge wrote. “Accordingly, the Plaintiffs have established likely success on the merits of their First Amendment challenge.”

The government argued Trump’s order advanced a “compelling” and “important” interest in “protecting the personnel of the United States and its allies from investigation, arrest, detention, and prosecution by the ICC without the consent of the United States or its allies.”

The judge, however, found the executive order too broadly written and mused that it “appears to restrict substantially more speech than necessary to further that end.”

In Executive Order 14203, titled, “Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court,” the 45th and 47th president said he was motivated by the ICC’s “illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and [its] close ally Israel.”

The court takes stock of the president’s cited justification for issuing the sanctions, at length:

The Executive Order condemns the ICC’s investigations of U.S. and Israeli personnel and its issuance of arrest warrants for Israel’s current Prime Minister and former Minister of Defense. The Executive Order, emphasizing that neither the U.S. nor Israel is a party to the ICC’s founding treaty, asserts that the ICC’s conduct “threatens to infringe upon” U.S. sovereignty and “undermin[es]” the “critical national security and foreign policy work” of the United States, Israel, and other U.S. allies

But, the court notes, the plaintiffs’ work has nothing to do with the United States or Israel. Rather, the court explains, Smith’s work has focused on “the OTP’s investigation and prosecution of atrocity crimes against the ethnic minority Rohingya people in the People’s Republic of Bangladesh and the Republic of the Union of Myanmar.” And Radhakrishnan’s work has focused on “matters involving sexual and gender-based violence, particularly in Afghanistan.”

The judge then applies the executive order as written to the facts alleged by the plaintiff’s about their work for the ICC’s OTP.

“The Executive Order broadly prohibits any speech-based services that benefit the Prosecutor, regardless of whether those beneficial services relate to an ICC investigation of the United States, Israel, or another U.S. ally,” the order reads. “The Government does not explain how its stated interest would be undermined—or even impacted—by the Plaintiffs’ services to the OTP related to the ICC’s ongoing work in Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Afghanistan.”

Torresen goes on to say the plaintiffs’ “irreparable injury is presumed” due to the nature of a First Amendment claim. Here, the judge is essentially saying a violation of the free speech guarantee in the nation’s founding charter is a sufficient injury alone – and does not need to be extensively analyzed.

Notably, while the court notes the plaintiffs alleged Trump’s order “violates the First Amendment” and was in excess of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the court did not reach the IEEPA claim.

Finally, the judge balanced the equities – pitting the plaintiffs’ First Amendment injury against the defendant’s interest in “national security and foreign policy interests.” Again, the human rights advocates came out on top.

“I find the Government’s argument unpersuasive,” Torresen intones. “First, the Government has at least implied that injunctive relief is unnecessary because it does not intend to enforce the Executive Order against the Plaintiffs at all. It is hard to square that position with the Government’s assertion that an injunction would impede national security and foreign policy interests.”

In other words, the court says the government is trying to have things both ways by insisting they would never target the plaintiffs while also arguing an order barring them from going after the plaintiffs would be detrimental.

The court then returns to the factual record of the executive order’s stated goals and the plaintiff’s actual human rights work.

“Second, even putting that inconsistency aside, I find the Government’s argument unpersuasive for the same reasons that I find Section 3(a) fails intermediate scrutiny,” the order goes on. “The Government does not explain how the Plaintiffs’ continued services to the Prosecutor concerning atrocities in Bangladesh, Myanmar, or Afghanistan would impede national security and foreign policy interests concerning the United States and Israel.”

The court, in the end, barred the government from sanctioning the plaintiffs for their work with the ICC’s OTP.

“The Government is hereby enjoined from imposing civil or criminal penalties on the Plaintiffs under Executive Order 14203,” the order concludes.

Judge bars Trump admin from imposing sanctions on US human rights advocates
“The Executive Order broadly prohibits any speech-based services that benefit the Prosecutor, regardless of whether those beneficial services relate to an ICC investigation of the United States.”
‘Violates the First Amendment’: Judge bars Trump admin from imposing sanctions on US human rights advocates who work for International Criminal Court

Reuters: ICE may deport migrants to countries other than their own with just six hours notice, memo says

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U.S. immigration officials may deport migrants to countries other than their home nations with as little as six hours’ notice, a top Trump administration official said in a memo, offering a preview of how deportations could ramp up.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will generally wait at least 24 hours to deport someone after informing them of their removal to a so-called “third country,” according to a memo dated Wednesday, July 9, from the agency’s acting director, Todd Lyons.

ICE could remove them, however, to a so-called “third country” with as little as six hours’ notice “in exigent circumstances,” said the memo, as long as the person has been provided the chance to speak with an attorney.

The memo states that migrants could be sent to nations that have pledged not to persecute or torture them “without the need for further procedures.”

The new ICE policy suggests President Donald Trump’s administration could move quickly to send migrants to countries around the world.

The Supreme Court in June lifted a lower court’s order limiting such deportations without a screening for fear of persecution in the destination country.

Following the high court’s ruling and a subsequent order from the justices, the Trump administration sent eight migrants from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Sudan and Vietnam to South Sudan.

The administration last week pressed officials from five African nations – Liberia, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania and Gabon – to accept deportees from elsewhere, Reuters reported.

The Washington Post first reported the new ICE memo.

The administration argues the third country deportations help swiftly remove migrants who should not be in the U.S., including those with criminal convictions.

Advocates have criticized the deportations as dangerous and cruel, since people could be sent to countries where they could face violence, have no ties and do not speak the language.

Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for a group of migrants pursuing a class action lawsuit against such rapid third-county deportations at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, said the policy “falls far short of providing the statutory and due process protections that the law requires.”

Third-country deportations have been done in the past, but the tool could be more frequently used as Trump tries to ramp up deportations to record levels.

During Trump’s 2017-2021 presidency, his administration deported small numbers of people from El Salvador and Honduras to Guatemala.

Former President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration struck a deal with Mexico to take thousands of migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, since it was difficult to deport migrants to those nations.

The new ICE memo was filed as evidence in a lawsuit over the wrongful deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.

ICE may deport migrants to countries other than their own with just six hours notice, memo says

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/ice-may-deport-migrants-countries-other-than-their-own-with-just-six-hours-2025-07-13

Esquire: Somehow Republicans Are Defending Kristi Noem After the Forceful Removal of Senator Alex Padilla

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I thought assaulting someone holding federal office was a crime. Not anymore, apparently.

So, apparently we’re bum-rushing US senators now. From The Guardian:

In video taken of the incident that has since gone viral on social media, Padilla is seen being restrained and removed from the room by Secret Service agents.“I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” Padilla shouts, as he struggles to move past the men removing him from the premises. “Hands off!” he says at one point.Emerging afterward, Padilla, who is the ranking member of the judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety, said he and his colleagues had repeatedly asked DHS for more information on its “increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions” but had not received a response to his inquiries.

This tinhorn governor of a state where nobody lives, this puppy-murdering hack whose political career outside of MAGA World was as dead as Custer, now gets to sic her black-shirted thugs on the senior senator of a state that she and her criminal boss and all their attendant lords have been lying about, and about which she had flown to Los Angeles to lie about some more.

Dumbass in a ballcap says what? She just admitted they’re blowing up the town to get rid of the mayor and governor. If the courts ever get their teeth back, this gaffe will figure prominently in many filings.

Meanwhile, Padilla is hauled into a backroom and driven to the floor and handcuffed.

And not for nothing, but threatening and/or assaulting the holder of any federal office is a felony and could draw you five to ten in the pokey. And these goons are pretty identifiable.

And, of course, the administration’s prevarication mill went into full operation almost instantly. From The New Republic via Yahoo:

In posts on X, the official DHS account and Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin released a statement attempting to justify wrestling Padilla to the ground and handcuffing him. “Senator Padilla chose disrespectful political theatre and interrupted a live press conference without identifying himself or having his Senate security pin on as he lunged toward Secretary Noem,” the statement read.

Tricia learned to lie like this at the AEI’s Leadership Institute.

But in a video of the altercation from Padilla’s office, the senator could be heard clearly identifying himself. “Hands off! I’m Senator Alex Padilla, and I have questions for the secretary,” said the California Democrat as a security guard pushed him out of the room.

It’s clear that the goons looked at him and just saw another angry brown face. And by their reactions, Tricia and her boss are similarly afflicted.

This is also all my bollocks. Noem knows who Padilla is and, if she doesn’t, she should, and he did identify himself. Third-rate hack with a fourth-rate alibi.

And what about Speaker Moses? What did you expect?

That sanctimonious sumbitch wants Padilla censured. And he spent the afternoon hiding. If he’s a Christian, I’m an Ostrogoth.

The day was not without its burlesque, however. In a House Oversight Committee hearing, Rep. Maxwell Frost asked Chairman James (Jughead) Comer to issue a subpoena for Noem regarding the events of the day. Comer, of course, refused, probably because Padilla was not carrying Hunter Biden’s laptop at the time. And then we were off.

Somehow Republicans Are Defending Kristi Noem After the Forceful Removal of Senator Alex Padilla
I thought assaulting someone holding federal office was a crime. Not anymore, apparently.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a65058840/senator-padilla-kristi-noem-james-comer-marjorie-taylor-greene

Politico: Trump admin deportation flight to South Sudan violated court order, judge rules

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It’s the latest rebuke in an escalating clash over Trump’s deportation agenda. Several judges have now accused the administration of defying the courts.

The Trump administration “unquestionably” violated a court order when it put seven men on a deportation flight bound for South Sudan, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, suggesting that administration officials may have committed criminal contempt.

The rebuke from U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy is the latest episode in an intensifying clash between the administration and the judiciary over President Donald Trump’s campaign to carry out rapid deportations while evading court oversight.

Three federal judges have now castigated the administration for circumventing, or outright defying, court orders that have sought to block or reverse aspects of Trump’s deportation agenda. And several others — including a majority of the Supreme Court — have scolded the administration for attempting to violate immigrants’ due process rights.

…

The hasty deportations fell far short of the due process requirements in Murphy’s April ruling, the judge said Wednesday.

Trump admin deportation flight to South Sudan violated court order, judge rules
It’s the latest rebuke in an escalating clash over Trump’s deportation agenda. Several judges have now accused the administration of defying the courts.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/21/trump-deportations-south-sudan-00362919

Associated Press: ‘Unquestionably in violation’: Judge says US government didn’t follow court order on deportations

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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.

‘Unquestionably in violation’: Judge says US government didn’t follow court order on deportations
A federal judge says the White House violated a court order on deportations to third countries with a flight linked to the chaotic nation of South Sudan.

https://apnews.com/article/deportation-immigration-south-sudan-department-of-homeland-security-a09612dbd055c5d1d88902c415bdf3e6

Rolling Stone: Trump Allegedly Violates Court Order, Sends Asian Immigrants to South Sudan

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The administration reportedly deported two men from Myanmar and Vietnam to war-torn South Sudan

After an appeals court declined to remove an injunction aimed at barring Donald Trump’s administration from deporting noncitizens to “third-party countries” – a country that is not their country of origin – without due process, and without giving them chance to raise concerns of persecution, torture, and death, the government allegedly violated that court order days later.

Two men, who are originally from Myanmar and Vietnam and were being held in U.S. immigration custody, were deported to war-torn South Sudan, according their lawyers, Politico reported. Their lawyers said they received the a notice of the deportation plan on Monday evening and that by Tuesday morning, they were on a plane with 10 other deportees.

Earlier this month, as Rolling Stone reported, the Trump administration was preparing to use a military plane to fly immigrants to Libya before Judge Brian Murphy clarified that doing so would violate his court order. Lawyers with the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and Human Rights warned that “Laotian, Vietnamese, and Philippine” immigrants, who are being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Texas, were “being prepared for removal to Libya, a county notorious for its human rights violations, especially with respect to migrant residents.”

Lawyers for the Burmese man, per Politico, said he was originally scheduled to be on a flight to Libya, before the plan was abandoned amid media and legal scrutiny. The attorneys also said that the man, identified as N.M. in court papers, received notification about the deportation to South Sudan only in English, violating Judge Murphy’s previous order due to N.M.’s limited English proficiency.

Sudan and South Sudan are on the U.S. Department of States “do not travel” advisory list, yet King Donald and his cronies are using it for third-country deportations.

Trump Allegedly Violates Court Order, Sends Asian Immigrants to South Sudan
Two men, who are originally from Myanmar and Vietnam and were being held in U.S. immigration custody, were reportedly deported to war-torn South Sudan.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-sends-asian-immigrants-south-sudan-violates-court-1235344357

Western Journal: Ruling South African Party Furious After White Refugees Escape to US; Want ‘Accountability for Historic Privilege’

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The Episcopal Church rejected the Trump administration’s request for assistance, saying it would not help the 59 South African refugees that arrived in the U.S. on Monday.

The church’s presiding bishop, Sean Rowe, took it a step further and said the Episcopal Migration Ministries would be terminating its 40-year-old partnership with the U.S. government, according to a statement from the church published Monday.

“In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step,” Rowe’s statement read.

“Accordingly, we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government,” Rowe said.

In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order largely suspending the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, a program the church participated in, to control the immigration crisis created by the Biden administration.

“Then, just over two weeks ago, the federal government informed Episcopal Migration Ministries that under the terms of our federal grant, we are expected to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa whom the U.S. government has classified as refugees,” Rowe said in his Monday statement.

Ruling South African Party Furious After White Refugees Escape to US; Want ‘Accountability for Historic Privilege’
After 40 years, in which it settled nearly 110,000 refugees, the Episcopal Church ended its refugee agreement with the federal government.
Ruling South African Party Furious After White Refugees Escape to US, Wanted to Impose ‘Accountability for Historic Privilege’

LA Times: Authorities arrest over 100 people on Tennessee roads in support of Trump’s deportation plan

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More than 100 people have been taken into custody by federal immigration officials in a joint operation with the Tennessee Highway Patrol, leaving many in Nashville’s immigrant community uncertain and worried.

“None of us have ever seen anything like this,” Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, said Friday.

…

But immigrant rights supporters contend that the patrols have focused on parts of the city where the majority of residents are people of color.

“All signs point to this being racial profiling intended to terrorize the heart of the immigrant and refugee community,” Sherman Luna said. “What we’ve heard is that THP is flagging people down for things like a broken taillight or tinted windows.”

Sherman Luna believes some of those being detained would be allowed to stay in the country if they were able to receive competent legal representation at an immigration hearing. Instead, she has heard that people are agreeing to be deported out of fear that they could spend months or years in immigration detention.

Authorities arrest over 100 people on Tennessee roads in support of Trump’s deportation plan
More than 100 people have been taken into custody by federal immigration officials in a joint operation with the Tennessee Highway Patrol, leaving many in Nashville’s immigrant community uncertain and worried.

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-05-11/authorities-arrest-over-100-people-on-tennessee-roads-in-support-of-trumps-deportation-plan