U.S. District Judge with the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts Brian Murphy ruled at an emergency hearing Wednesday that the Department of Homeland Security had “unquestionably” violated a court order by flying a group of migrants to South Sudan.

President Donald Trump made combating illegal immigration a key part of his campaign, and since taking office has signed a number of executive orders seeking to effectuate mass deportations, with the enthusiastic support of his nominees like DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

Murphy had previously issued a ruling that blocked the Trump administration from deporting migrants outside of the U.S. to anywhere outside of their home country without providing them a “meaningful” opportunity to contest the removal.

Only one of the migrants on Tuesday’s flight was from South Sudan, and the choice of that nation as a destination was especially controversial due to the violence, instability, and rampant human rights abuses there. South Sudan has been plagued by brutal civil wars for decades that included genocidal massacres, forced displacements, murders of journalists, and ongoing ethnic violence.

All Rise News editor-in-chief and former Law&Crime managing editor Adam Klasfeld covered the hearing, noting how the 17-page legal brief filed by the migrants’ attorneys on Tuesday described sending their clients to South Sudan was an especially “egregious” move as the nation “is now returning to full-blown and catastrophic civil war.”

DHS and the White House posted several tweets Wednesday that included the migrants’ names and photographs, but then DHS attorneys argued in court “that information about them was too sensitive to disclose in open court,” reported Klasfeld.

Noem made headlines this week with the aggressively inaccurate definition of habeas corpus she provided during a Senate committee hearing, and she and other Trump administration officials have made repeated comments about due process that are in conflict with constitutional scholars and Supreme Court rulings.

Murphy zeroed in on the timing of the flights, noting that the migrants were told they were being deported Monday evening and put on a plane Tuesday morning, which was “plainly insufficient” time for them to contact their attorneys or otherwise file legal objections to their removal to South Sudan.

“It was impossible for these people to have a meaningful opportunity to object to their transfer to South Sudan,” Murphy said as he issued his oral order at the end of the hearing. “The Department’s actions in this case are unquestionably violative of this court’s order.”

At least two of the migrants were served with a notice of removal that was only in English and said they were going to be sent to “South Africa,” Klasfeld reported. These migrants did not speak English and refused to sign the notice, finding out later that the true destination was South Sudan.

DHS attorneys informed the court that the flight had landed in South Sudan, but the migrants remained on the plane and in ICE custody.

Murphy has not yet ruled on whether to order all or some of the migrants to be returned to the U.S., and “said he intends to amend his previous ruling to give a more specific time frame before people can be sent to third countries,” according to Klasfeld.

Thus far, the judge has not decided whether the defiance of his previous order by Trump administration officials constituted criminal contempt, telling the attorneys he would address that issue on “another day.”

The post JUST IN: Trump Administration ‘Unquestionably’ Violated Court Order By Sending Migrants to War-Torn South Sudan, Judge Rules first appeared on Mediaite.

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