After legal battle, US sends eight detainees to country it has advised citizens not to visit due to ‘crime, conflict’.The United States has confirmed it completed the deportations of eight men to South Sudan, a day after a US judge cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s administration to send them to the violence-hit African country.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on Saturday that the men were deported a day earlier, on US Independence Day on Friday, after they lost a last-minute legal bid to halt their transfer.
The eight detainees – immigrants from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, South Sudan and Vietnam – had been held under guard at a US military base in Djibouti for weeks.
A staffer working at Juba airport in South Sudan told the Reuters news agency that the aircraft carrying the men had arrived on Saturday at 6am local time (04:00 GMT). Their current location is not known.
In a statement, DHS said the eight men had been convicted of a range of crimes, including first-degree murder, robbery, drug trafficking and sexual assault.
Their case had become a flashpoint in ongoing legal battles over the Trump administration’s campaign of mass deportations, including removals to so-called “third countries” where rights groups say deportees face safety risks and possible abuses.
“These third country deportations are wrong, period. And the United States should not be sending people to a literal war zone,” progressive Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal wrote on social media earlier this week, urging the deportations to be blocked.
The eight men had been held in a converted shipping container in Djibou …