Catholic organizations and legal experts warn that recent deportations to East Africa violate a court order, due process, and human dignity.
By Gina Christian, OSV News
(OSV News) — Catholic immigration advocates are expressing their concern after the Trump administration apparently deported several immigrants without permanent legal status to East Africa — despite a court order restricting the government from deporting people to nations that are not their countries of origin.
“The deportation of migrants to South Sudan, in direct defiance of a court order, is a grave violation of the rule of law,” said Anna Gallagher, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc., also known as CLINIC. “Our legal system is built on the principle that court rulings must be respected, yet this action undermines that foundation.”
“It’s hard to come up with words to describe how this government is defying the rule of law in their deportation campaign,” said J. Kevin Appleby, senior fellow for policy and communications at the Center for Migration Studies of New York and former director of migration policy and public affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Recent expulsions to third countries
In April, U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts, presiding over a case challenging such third-country removals, had ordered the Trump administration not to deport those with a final order of removal to a non-origin country without due process — which, he said, entailed that the person “be told where they are going and be given a chance to tell the United States that they might be killed if sent there.”
However, seven men from various nations — including Vietnam, Cuba, Mexico and Myanmar — are believed to have been taken by plane May 20-21 to a U.S. military base in Djibouti, a small country in East Africa bordering Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. President Donald Trump confirmed the removals to Djibouti on May 22.
The Trump administration May 27 asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Murphy’s order, arguing that “in addition to usurping the Executive’s authority over immigration policy, the injunction disrupts sensitive diplomatic, foreign-policy, and national-security efforts.”
OSV News was directed by media relations staff at Camp Lemonnier, the Navy-led base in Djibouti, to ask the White House for verification of the men’s arrival and detention there.
The Trump administration had sought to deport the men — all of whom had been convicted of violent crimes — to South Sudan, some 870 miles east of Djibouti. The Department of Homeland Security posted a 70-page document on its website detailing the men’s criminal records, and noted on May 22 that one of the seven, Nyo Myint, would be returned to his native Myanmar. Another of the men, Dian Peter Domach, is a citizen of South Sudan.
Concerns arise over treatment of deportees
On May 20, Murphy ordered DHS “to maintain custody and control” of those removed to South Sudan or to any third country pending a legal review. He also noted the court expected that such persons “will be treated humanely.”
“We are removing these convicted criminals from American soil so they can never hurt another American victim. It is absurd that an activist judge is trying to force the United States to bring back these uniquely barbaric monsters who present a clear and present threat to the safety of the American people,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a May 21 statement.
While U.S. law does in some cases make provisions for removals to non-origin nations, the practice has been typically rare, and balanced against concerns for the potential endangerment of deportees.
Federal law specifies that — in accord with the United Nations’ Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment — removal may be withheld for those who would face torture.
Expulsions would violate international law
Central to that safeguard is the principle of non-refoulement, which under international human rights law — such as the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol — provides that refugees cannot be expelled to territories where substantial threats to life or freedom exist.
“Non-refoulement is the critical aspect here,” said Stacy L. Brustin, professor emerita and director of the Immigration Law and Policy Initiative at The Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law.
Brustin told OSV News that non-refoulement is “not just something that we’re required to do under U.S. law, but it’s a matter of international law.”
South Sudan has been assigned a level 4 “do not travel” status by the U.S. State Department due to “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict.” In March, the U.S. Embassy in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, reduced staffing to the minimum due to “continued security threats” while urging U.S. citizens to consider leaving by commercial means while still available.
“Sending migrants to a poor and unstable country like South Sudan violates human rights and dignity,” Appleby told OSV News. “The danger here is that this practice will become commonplace if it is not challenged.”
Gallagher observed that “these individuals were sent to a country that is not their home and one that itself has experienced instability, violence and famine — conditions that mirror the very reasons many migrants flee in the first place.”
Brustin noted that while the principle of non-refoulement does permit some exceptions, “under the Convention Against Torture, even criminals cannot be returned back to a country where they’re going to experience torture.
“So it’s sort of the last level of protection, regardless of criminal history, that is basically stating that … everybody, regardless of their criminal history, has a right not to be tortured,” she said.
Yet the Trump administration — following through on a campaign pledge to effect mass deportations of immigrants without permanent legal status — is looking to scale up such removals to nations including El Salvador, Libya, Mexico and Rwanda, along with South Sudan.
Due process and human rights are being endangered in the process, according to judges and immigration advocates.
Judge Murphy warned about the lack of due process
Murphy issued a May 23 order requiring the Trump administration to return a Guatemalan man, identified in court documents as O.C.G., back to the U.S., where he had sought protection — approved by an immigration judge — following attacks in his native country. However, two days later the man was placed on a bus to Mexico, where, according to court documents, he had previously been kidnapped and raped. Mexico in turn deported the man to Guatemala.
“Plaintiff O.C.G. has no known criminal history,” Murphy wrote, adding the court “has already found it likely” that the man’s removal “lacked due process.”
The removals also run counter to Catholic social teaching, which “calls us to honor the dignity of every person and to welcome the stranger, upholding justice, and compassion, especially for the most vulnerable,” said Gallagher. “It is deeply troubling that this administration continues to disregard these fundamental values.”
“From a Catholic social teaching perspective … it’s just a constant wearing down of the dignity of individuals, regardless of what they have done,” said Brustin. “It’s just the dehumanization that is so profound.”
Featured image: A man holds a sign as Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, leads a rally and march at San Jacinto Plaza in El Paso March 24, 2025, against mass deportations by the US government. (OSV News/Bob Roller)
