Legal experts and allies of President Donald Trump are accusing a federal judge of overstepping his authority by halting the deportation of eight criminally convicted illegal migrants to war-torn South Sudan, a flashpoint in the administration’s efforts to expedite U.S. immigration enforcement through third-country removals.
In a scathing ruling on Monday, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, accused the administration of “manufacturing the very chaos they decry.” Murphy said the government had failed to provide proper legal notice before attempting to remove the men to South Sudan, a nation where they have no ties and where civil war looms, and he required the eight migrants to remain on U.S. territory in Djibouti or be sent back to the U.S. mainland.
