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djibouti
After Trump Deportation Attempt, Migrants and ICE Agents Stranded in Shipping Container in Djibouti
"This is a situation the government both created and can remedy if it so chooses," said a lawyer for the migrants.
Jun 06, 2025
The Trump administration could have sent eight migrants with deportation orders and the immigration agents who were escorting them to a facility in the U.S. after a federal judge recently barred officials from deporting them to war-torn South Sudan, where they could face persecution or torture.
Instead the administration sent them to U.S. Naval Base Camp Lemonnier in the East African country of Djibouti, where a court filing on Thursday said they face illness, the threat of rocket fire from nearby Yemen, temperatures that soar past 100°F daily, and rancid smoke from nearby burn pits where human waste and trash are incinerated.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, blamed U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy for "stranding" the 13 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and eight detainees at the naval base, where they have been housed since late May in a metal shipping container converted into a conference room with just six bunk beds.
The administration has frequently attacked judges for issuing rulings that have interfered with President Donald Trump's ability to carry out his anti-immigration agenda.
But Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, pointed to court transcripts that showed the Trump administration had requested the migrants and agents be sent to Camp Lemonnier.
"No one asked them to do and no court order forces them to do it," said Reichlin-Melnick Thursday.
In a court transcript, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign told Murphy that "bringing them back would be a much broader remedy than necessary" and suggested the detainees could have a "reasonable fear interview where they are" in Djibouti to determine if they had a credible fear of persecution or torture if they were deported. Murphy had instructed officials to arrange reasonable fear interviews when he ruled in May that they could not be sent to South Sudan.
"The judge did NOT require that anyone be 'stranded' anywhere," said Reichlin-Melnick. "In fact, it was the Trump administration that asked the judge for permission to hold the men in Djibouti! ICE could literally bring the men to any other U.S. base (or back to the U.S.) at any time!"
Murphy's ruling in May interrupted a deportation flight carrying the migrants—who have been convicted of crimes and are from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, South Sudan, and Vietnam—to South Sudan.
The judge said the flight violated his previous order from April 18, which prohibited the administration from sending immigrants to third countries without providing them a chance to request humanitarian protections. That ruling was underpinned by the Convention Against Torture, which bars governments from deporting people to countries where they could be face torture.
"The judge gave the government a choice as to how to remedy the government's violation of the court's order—either return them and comply with the order in the United States or comply with the order overseas," Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for the immigrants, toldThe Intercept. "The government opted to comply overseas after telling the court that they had the ability to do so. This is a situation the government both created and can remedy if it so chooses."
The court filing on Thursday by Mellissa Harper of the Office of Refugee Resettlement described how within 72 hours of arriving at the makeshift detention facility in Djibouti, the agents and migrants began to suffer from symptoms for bacterial respiratory infections, including "coughing, difficulty breathing, fever, and achy joints."
The filing explained that they are unable to get tested to determine what the illness is, and there is only a small supply of inhalers, Tylenol, eye drops, and nasal spray to treat the symptoms.
Based on what was described, Politico's Kyle Cheney asked: "Why is the Trump administration forcing them to stay there?"
"ICE's claims of difficulties here are ENTIRELY self-inflicted," said Reichlin-Melnick. "THEY asked the judge for permission to hold the men in Djibouti. The plaintiffs wanted the men brought back here. I have sympathy for the low-level officers stuck there, but it's ALL their bosses' fault."
The administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay Murphy's order requiring screenings for the migrants, claiming that ruling violated officials' authority to deport immigrants to third countries if their home countries won't take them back.
But in the case of at least one of the migrants, Jesus Munoz Gutierrez, the government of his home country of Mexico was not informed that he had been sent to Djibouti.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum suggested last month that Gutierrez could be repatriated if U.S. followed protocols to send him back to Mexico.
Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director for Detention Watch Network, toldNewsweek that the administration's insistence on detaining the migrants in a shipping container at Camp Lemonniere is "the latest move in Trump's shocking expansion of third country deportations."
"By expelling people out of sight and out of mind to remote prisons and war-torn, unstable countries," said Ghandehari, "the Trump regime is attempting to normalize the offshoring of immigration detention and third country deportations as a new and expanded model of incarceration and deportation."
Ghandehari added that "the use of shipping containers to detain people is heinous and enraging—and coupled with the extreme heat, disease, and threats of rocket attacks in Djibouti, can be deadly."
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'Unprecedented Threat' for East Africa as Larger Second Wave of Locust Crisis Arrives Amid Pandemic
As the coronavirus outbreak delays efforts to eradicate the pests, experts warn locust swarms could grow 20-fold.
Apr 10, 2020
While much of the world focuses on the coronavirus pandemic that has infected over 1.6 million people across the globe, East Africa is battling the worst invasion of desert locusts in decades--a monthslong "scourge of biblical proportions" that experts warn could get worse with a larger second wave already arriving in parts of the region.
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, which is shepherding the global response to the region's locust crisis, "estimates that locust numbers could grow another 20 times during the upcoming rainy season unless control activities are stepped up," U.N. Newsreported Thursday.
A Wednesday update from FAO's Locust Watch service warned:
The current situation in East Africa remains extremely alarming as hopper bands and an increasing number of new swarms form in northern and central Kenya, southern Ethiopia, and Somalia. This represents an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods because it coincides with the beginning of the long rains and the planting season. Although ground and aerial control operations are in progress, widespread rains that fell in late March will allow the new swarms to mostly remain, mature and lay eggs while a few swarms could move from Kenya to Uganda, South Sudan and Ethiopia. During May, the eggs will hatch into hopper bands that will form new swarms in late June and July, which coincides with the start of the harvest.
The massive swarms, as Common Dreams has reported, are partly fueled by the climate crisis and have affected Djibouti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. The pests have also been spotted in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan, and India.
The main method of battling locust swarms--which each can devour enough food to feed 35,000 people in a day--is the spraying of pesticides. Concerns are mounting that locust eradication efforts in the region will be increasingly hampered by pandemic-related travel restrictions and supplies problems.
\u201c\u201cParts of Africa were already threatened by another kind of plague, the biggest locust outbreak some countries had seen in 70 years.\n\n\u201cNow the second wave of the voracious insects, some 20 times the size of the first, is arriving.\u201d https://t.co/tsaWoSbNEi\u201d— Jonathan Lemire (@Jonathan Lemire) 1586517820
"Suppliers of motorized sprayers and pesticides are facing major challenges with limited airfreight options to facilitate delivery," Cyril Ferrand, FAO's resilience team leader for East Africa, told EARTHER on March 30. "Purchased orders were placed [a] few weeks ago and pesticides expected last week in Kenya have been delayed by 10 days."
Ferrand said in a statement Thursday that "there is no significant slowdown" in efforts to stop the swarms across the region so far "because all the affected countries working with FAO consider desert locusts a national priority."
"While lockdown is becoming a reality, people engaged in the fight against the upsurge are still allowed to conduct surveillance, and air and ground control operations," he said. "The biggest challenge we are facing at the moment is the supply of pesticides and we have delays because global air freight has been reduced significantly."
"Our absolute priority is to prevent a breakdown in pesticide stocks in each country," Ferrand added. "That would be dramatic for rural populations whose livelihoods and food security depend on the success of our control campaign."
\u201cThe fight against desert locusts in East Africa goes on despite #COVID19 restrictions, @UN's @FAOnews says, the agency leading the effort to defeat hunger.\n\nhttps://t.co/oHSvDgTXKP\u201d— UN News (@UN News) 1586498400
FAO has secured about $111.1 million of the $153.2 million it has requested to tackle the locust crisis and is supporting surveillance and pesticide application in 10 nations.
The U.N. agency continues to raise concerns about how locusts could impact the collective 20 million people already enduring food insecurity in Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania--as well as an additional 15 million people in war-torn Yemen.
This is the worst locust invasion that Kenya has seen in 70 years. Quartz Africareported Friday on current conditions in the country, where hoppers have been maturing into adults over the past month after hatching in February and early March:
These swarms are still immature, and take up to four weeks before they are ready to lay eggs. Kenya is more than halfway through this maturation cycle, and the new generation of locust swarms are expected to begin laying eggs within the week.
In Kenya, the locust maturation is coinciding with the onset of the rainy season. Farmers have been sowing crops of maize, beans, sorghum, barley, and millet during March and April, in hopes that a favorable rainy season will allow for abundant growth during late April and May. With the locust swarms gaining size and strength, experts fear that up to 100% of farmers' budding crops could be consumed, leaving some communities with nothing to harvest.
"The concern at the moment is that the desert locust will eat under-emerging plants," Ferrand told Quartz. "This very soft, green material, biomass leaves, rangeland, is, of course, the favorite food for the desert locusts."
As for the coronavirus pandemic that first emerged in China late last year, Africa has reported 562 deaths and nearly 11,000 COVID-19 cases, according to Al Jazeera, which are relatively low figures compared with other affected regions. However, the U.N.'s World Health Organization (WHO) is warning that some African nations could see a significant spike in cases in the coming weeks.
"During the last four days, we can see that the numbers have already doubled," Michel Yao, the WHO Africa program manager for emergency response, said Thursday. "If the trend continues, and also learning from what happened in China and in Europe, some countries may face a huge peak very soon."
As Ferrand said in his March conversation with EARTHER: "How do we respond to the needs of the European countries and North American countries as well as the humanitarian and development assistance that is still so necessary in the continent of Africa? ...This is the challenge that we will have to face in 2020."
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'A Scourge of Biblical Proportions': UN Leaders Sound Alarm on East Africa Locust Crisis in Call for Global Response
The worst outbreak in decades has devastated crops across a region already enduring food insecurity, conflict, and climate impacts.
Feb 25, 2020
Top United Nations relief officials warned Tuesday that millions more in funding is needed to combat East Africa's worst outbreak of desert locusts in decades, arguing that "acting now to avert a food crisis is a more humane, effective, and cost efficient approach than responding to the aftermath of disaster."
"The locust upsurge affecting East Africa is a graphic and shocking reminder of this region's vulnerability."
--U.N. relief leaders
The call for international action came in a joint statement from Qu Dongyu, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); Mark Lowcock, U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator; and David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Program (WFP).
The U.N. leaders are especially concerned about the impact on East Africa, which they noted is "a region beset by climate- and conflict-related shocks. Millions of people are already acutely food insecure. Now they face another major hunger threat in the form of desert locusts."
"The locust upsurge affecting East Africa is a graphic and shocking reminder of this region's vulnerability," they said. "This is a scourge of biblical proportions. Yet as ancient as this scourge is, its scale today is unprecedented in modern times."
\u201cLocust swarms the size of entire cities are devastating East Africa\u201d— NowThis (@NowThis) 1582260480
The swarms--at least partly fueled by the climate crisis--have affected Djibouti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. Beyond the African continent, locusts have also been spotted in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan, and India.
While the FAO requested $76 million in funding for the crisis last month, only $33 million has been received or committed. According to the trio of U.N. officials, "As the locusts continue their invasion throughout eastern Africa, and more details emerge about the scale of need in affected areas, the cost of action has already doubled, to $138 million."
"We need to do more. WFP has estimated the cost of responding to the impact of locusts on food security alone to be at least 15 times higher than the cost of preventing the spread now," the statement said. "It is time for the international community to act more decisively. The math is clear, as is our moral obligation. Pay a little now, or pay a lot more later."
\u201cEast Africa is facing major threat from #DesertLocusts. The window of opportunity to help is still open & the math is clear: pay a little now, or pay a lot more later, said the chiefs of @FAO, @WFP and @UNOCHA.\n\nhttps://t.co/bvYrt3Dohg\u201d— UN News (@UN News) 1582714800
Crystal Wells, Africa spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, toldThe Lancet last week that "the locusts are coming on the heels of what has been a very tumultuous year for East Africa. Last year, the region swung between conditions that were either too hot and dry, or too wet."
"At the same time, people in Somalia and parts of Ethiopia continued to suffer from violence," Wells added. "In real terms, this means that thousands of people who are already on the run from clashes were uprooted once again by droughts and floods--and today risk losing whatever is left to locusts. There is only so much people can withstand."
Desert locusts have a reproduction cycle of about three months, and mature swarms are currently laying eggs across the Horn of Africa. The Lancet pointed out that "rains starting in March and April are expected to boost the breeding and spread of locusts."
With $138 million funding, the U.N. agencies hope to both provide relief to communities where crops have already been devoured by locusts and prevent new swarms from emerging. According to the FAO, a swarm contains as many as 150 million desert locusts per square kilometer (0.39 square miles) and can consume the same amount of food per day as 35,000 people.
BBC News reported Wednesday on the difficulties of addressing the crisis in the hardest hit countries:
The FAO has told us that in three of the worst affected countries, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, they estimate that at least 100,000 hectares in each one needs to be sprayed with insecticide.
By the end of January, they were substantially short of this target in those countries in East Africa.
- Ethiopia 22,550 hectares
- Kenya 20,000 hectares (estimated)
- Somalia 15,000 hectares (estimated)
Given that the aerial spraying of pesticides is the primary method of battling locust swarms, "vehicles, planes, personal safety equipment, radios, GPS units, and camping equipment are badly needed" to help contain the current outbreak, BBC reported.
\u201c.@FAO @UNOCHA @WFP have made an appeal for more funds to tackle the unprecedented invasion of #desertlocusts in East Africa.\n\n"The upsurge is threatening food security in a region that's already seriously food insecure. There is no time to waste" - @FAODG\n\nhttps://t.co/o2a6aOTOiX\u201d— FAO Newsroom (@FAO Newsroom) 1582707265
Stephen Njoka, head of the Desert Locust Control Organization for Eastern Africa, the regional body coordinating the fight against the locusts, told BBC: "We have a challenge in the number of aircraft available--there are not enough. Pesticides are also in short supply."
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