U.S. military aircraft are seen at U.S. Naval Base Camp Lemonnier on January 21, 2024 in Djibouti.
After Trump Deportation Attempt, Migrants and ICE Agents Stranded in Shipping Container in Djibouti
"This is a situation the government both created and can remedy if it so chooses," said a lawyer for the migrants.
The Trump administration could have sent eight migrants with deportation orders and the immigration agents who were escorting them to a facility in the U.S. after a federal judge recently barred officials from deporting them to war-torn South Sudan, where they could face persecution or torture.
Instead the administration sent them to U.S. Naval Base Camp Lemonnier in the East African country of Djibouti, where a court filing on Thursday said they face illness, the threat of rocket fire from nearby Yemen, temperatures that soar past 100°F daily, and rancid smoke from nearby burn pits where human waste and trash are incinerated.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, blamed U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy for "stranding" the 13 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and eight detainees at the naval base, where they have been housed since late May in a metal shipping container converted into a conference room with just six bunk beds.
The administration has frequently attacked judges for issuing rulings that have interfered with President Donald Trump's ability to carry out his anti-immigration agenda.
But Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, pointed to court transcripts that showed the Trump administration had requested the migrants and agents be sent to Camp Lemonnier.
"No one asked them to do and no court order forces them to do it," said Reichlin-Melnick Thursday.
In a court transcript, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign told Murphy that "bringing them back would be a much broader remedy than necessary" and suggested the detainees could have a "reasonable fear interview where they are" in Djibouti to determine if they had a credible fear of persecution or torture if they were deported. Murphy had instructed officials to arrange reasonable fear interviews when he ruled in May that they could not be sent to South Sudan.
"The judge did NOT require that anyone be 'stranded' anywhere," said Reichlin-Melnick. "In fact, it was the Trump administration that asked the judge for permission to hold the men in Djibouti! ICE could literally bring the men to any other U.S. base (or back to the U.S.) at any time!"
Murphy's ruling in May interrupted a deportation flight carrying the migrants—who have been convicted of crimes and are from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, South Sudan, and Vietnam—to South Sudan.
The judge said the flight violated his previous order from April 18, which prohibited the administration from sending immigrants to third countries without providing them a chance to request humanitarian protections. That ruling was underpinned by the Convention Against Torture, which bars governments from deporting people to countries where they could be face torture.
"The judge gave the government a choice as to how to remedy the government's violation of the court's order—either return them and comply with the order in the United States or comply with the order overseas," Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for the immigrants, toldThe Intercept. "The government opted to comply overseas after telling the court that they had the ability to do so. This is a situation the government both created and can remedy if it so chooses."
The court filing on
Thursday by Mellissa Harper of the Office of Refugee Resettlement
described how within 72 hours of arriving at the makeshift detention
facility in Djibouti, the agents and migrants began to suffer from
symptoms for bacterial respiratory infections, including "coughing,
difficulty breathing, fever, and achy joints."
The filing explained that they are unable to get tested to determine what the illness is, and there is only a small supply of inhalers, Tylenol, eye drops, and nasal spray to treat the symptoms.
Based on what was described, Politico's Kyle Cheney asked: "Why is the Trump administration forcing them to stay there?"
"ICE's claims of difficulties here are ENTIRELY self-inflicted," said Reichlin-Melnick. "THEY asked the judge for permission to hold the men in Djibouti. The plaintiffs wanted the men brought back here. I have sympathy for the low-level officers stuck there, but it's ALL their bosses' fault."
The administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay Murphy's order requiring screenings for the migrants, claiming that ruling violated officials' authority to deport immigrants to third countries if their home countries won't take them back.
But in the case of at least one of the migrants, Jesus Munoz Gutierrez, the government of his home country of Mexico was not informed that he had been sent to Djibouti.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum suggested last month that Gutierrez could be repatriated if U.S. followed protocols to send him back to Mexico.
Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director for Detention Watch Network, toldNewsweek that the administration's insistence on detaining the migrants in a shipping container at Camp Lemonniere is "the latest move in Trump's shocking expansion of third country deportations."
"By expelling people out of sight and out of mind to remote prisons and war-torn, unstable countries," said Ghandehari, "the Trump regime is attempting to normalize the offshoring of immigration detention and third country deportations as a new and expanded model of incarceration and deportation."
Ghandehari added that "the use of shipping containers to detain people is heinous and enraging—and coupled with the extreme heat, disease, and threats of rocket attacks in Djibouti, can be deadly."