US deports Southeast Asians to South Sudan despite court order

Boston: US immigration officials have begun deporting about 12 Southeast Asian migrants to SouthSudan, according to a Tuesday court filing and media r...

Boston: US immigration officials have begun deporting about 12 Southeast Asian migrants to South Sudan, according to a Tuesday court filing and media reports.

Immigration lawyers learned from a detention officer's email that a Burmese national, identified as "N.M." was "removed...to South Sudan," they wrote in a filing seeking the court's intervention and the return of the migrants.

A second migrant, a Vietnamese national identified as T.T.P. in the filing, "appears to have suffered the same fate" along with at least 10 others.

The removal violates an earlier order, the lawyers said, noting they had last filed an emergency motion on May 7, after media reports indicated immigration officials were seeking to deport N.M. and others to Libya and Saudia Arabia.

The court had sided with plaintiffs and "the men were ultimately transported back to an immigration detention center after remaining on a bus on the base's tarmac for three or four hours," the filing said.