A U.S. federal judge on Monday night harshly criticized the Trump administration for deporting five migrants from Nigeria and Gambia to Ghana, while at the same time ruling she lacked jurisdiction to hear the related lawsuit.
In a 16-page order, District Judge Tanya Chutkan, based in Washington, D.C., said advocacy groups representing the migrants failed to demonstrate why the case should fall under her authority.
She pointed to a June Supreme Court decision that allowed the Trump administration to deport migrants to third countries while a lower-court case in Boston was still pending.
Despite this, Chutkan argued the deportations of the West African migrants appeared to be an effort to bypass U.S. immigration courts by swiftly transferring them to another nation, Reuters reported.
“Defendants’ actions in this case appear to be taken in disregard of or despite its obligations to provide individuals present in the United States with due process and to treat even those who are subject to removal humanely,” she wrote.
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The Trump administration expanded deportations to third countries as part of a strategy to speed up removals and push immigrants living in the U.S. illegally to depart.
Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama said last week that his government had reached an agreement with Washington to accept deportees from West Africa and had already taken in 14 individuals.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, rejected claims that immigration law had been ignored, insisting the deportations were lawful.
“All of these illegal aliens deported to Ghana received due process and had a final order of removal from an immigration judge,” she said, adding that many had criminal convictions, including injury to a child, robbery, aggravated assault, and fraud.
According to the lawsuit, the five plaintiffs had legal protections against deportation to their home countries but were instead removed to Ghana, which planned to transfer them to Nigeria and Gambia.
One of the deported migrants, a bisexual man, had already been sent to Gambia and was reportedly in hiding, the filing stated.
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Image Credit: The Washington Post
