A US judge said any effort by the Trump administration to deport migrants to Libya would clearly violate a prior court order barring officials from swiftly deporting migrants to countries other than their own without first weighing whether they risk persecution or torture if sent there.
US District Judge Brian Murphy issued an order restricting their removal on Wednesday after Reuters, citing three US officials, reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration may for the first time deport migrants to Libya despite previous US condemnation of Libya's harsh treatment of detainees.
Two of the officials said the US military could fly the migrants to the North African country as soon as Wednesday, but stressed that plans could change.
Reuters could not determine how many migrants would be sent to Libya or the nationalities of those the administration was eyeing for deportation, including whether any were Libyan nationals. The relatives of one Mexican national told Reuters he had been instructed to sign a document allowing for his deportation to the African nation.
Immigration rights advocates said in court filings that individuals potentially subject to deportation to Libya also included Filipino, Laotian and Vietnamese migrants.
When asked about the planned deportations, President Donald Trump said he did not know whether they were happening.
"You'll have to ask Homeland Security," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
The Pentagon referred queries to the White House. The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.
A State Department spokesperson said: "We do not discuss the details of our diplomatic communications with other governments."
Libya's Government of National Unity said on Wednesday it rejected the use of Libyan territory as a destination for deporting migrants without its knowledge or consent. It also said there was no coordination with the United States regarding the transfer of migrants.
Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army, which controls eastern Libya, also rejected the idea, saying in a statement that taking in migrants deported from the US "violates the sovereignty of the homeland."
After news broke of the potential flight to Libya, lawyers for a group of migrants pursuing a class action lawsuit made an emergency request that Murphy block migrants from being deported to Libya or any country en route without ensuring their due process rights were met.
Murphy, who was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden, wrote: "If there is any doubt — the Court sees none — the allegedly imminent removals, as reported by news agencies and as Plaintiffs seek to corroborate with class-member accounts and public information, would clearly violate this Court's Order."
The administration had recently argued that Murphy's prior order only applied to DHS and not the Department of Defense, which US officials told Reuters would be involved in flying migrants to Libya.
Murphy said on Wednesday that DHS could not "evade" his order by transferring responsibility to the Defense Department or any other agency.
Trump, a Republican who made immigration a major issue during his election campaign, has launched aggressive enforcement action since taking office, surging troops to the southern border and pledging to deport millions of immigrants in the United States illegally.
As of Monday, the Trump administration had deported 152,000 people, according to DHS.
The administration has tried to encourage migrants to leave voluntarily by threatening steep fines, trying to strip away legal status and deporting migrants to notorious prisons in Guantanamo Bay and El Salvador.
MEXICO TO LIBYA
Family members of a Mexican national said they feared he could be deported from the United States to Libya after he called them on Tuesday from immigration detention in Texas, saying he had been told to sign a document allowing for his deportation to the African nation.
Valentin Yah, 39, said several others of various nationalities at the immigration detention center in Pearsall, Texas, had been told to sign the same document, according to two of his family members.
His family members, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said he was pleading with immigration officials to be sent to Mexico on Tuesday, only about 100 miles (160 km) from where he was detained.
"He's literally closer to his hometown in Mexico and begging them to send him back," one of his family members said.
Yah, an Indigenous Mexican from Yucatan, has a conviction for sexual abuse and served about 15 years in prison in the United States before being detained by immigration authorities, records show. He was ordered deported by an immigration judge in 2009, records show.
LIFE-THREATENING
In its annual human rights report last year before Trump took office in January, the US State Department criticized Libya's "harsh and life-threatening prison conditions." The department advises US citizens against visiting due to "crime, civil unrest, kidnapping and armed conflict."
Libya has had little peace since a 2011 NATO-backed uprising, and it split in 2014 between eastern and western factions, with rival administrations governing in each area. Major fighting ended with a truce in 2020, but the underlying political dispute remains and there are sporadic clashes.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week hinted that Washington was looking to expand the number of countries where it may deport people beyond El Salvador.
"The further away from America, the better," Rubio said at a cabinet meeting at the White House last Wednesday.
