US President Donald Trump’s administration has illegally deported two Asian men to South Sudan, immigration lawyers have told a court.
In a submission to a federal judge in Boston, the attorneys said a flight carrying a dozen people, including citizens of Myanmar and Vietnam, landed in South Sudan on Tuesday.
A previous court order bars the US government from deporting migrants to third countries without being given “meaningful opportunity” to challenge such removals.
The BBC has contacted the Department of Homeland Security for comment. South Sudan is one of the world’s poorest countries, and has been plagued by conflict and political instability in recent years.
Attorneys from the National Immigration Litigation Alliance asked the federal judge on Tuesday for an emergency order to prevent the deportations.
Judge Brian Murphy issued a ruling on 18 April requiring that illegal migrants have a chance to challenge removal to countries other than their homelands.
After reports surfaced that some of the migrants were going to be sent to Libya, Judge Murphy, a Biden appointee, said any such move would violate his ruling.
Lawyers for the Burmese man said in Tuesday’s court filing that their client speaks limited English and had refused to sign a notice of removal served on him by officials at an immigration detention centre in Texas.
On Tuesday morning an attorney emailed the centre after noticing her client was no longer showing up on a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee locator, says the court filing. She was informed he had been removed from the US.
When she asked to which country her client had been removed, the email reply said: “South Sudan.”
The lawyers said another client, a Vietnamese man, “appears to have suffered the same fate” and “is or was on the same flight” as the man from Myanmar.
The Vietnamese man’s spouse emailed his lawyer and said that the group of around 10 other individuals who were believed to have been deported included nationals of Laos, Thailand, Pakistan and Mexico, Reuters news agency reports.
“Please help!” the spouse said in an email. “They cannot be allowed to do this.”
The US government’s travel advisory states “do not travel to South Sudan due to crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict”.
Africa’s youngest nation, it endured a bloody civil war soon after its independence in 2011.
