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djibouti
Supreme Court OKs Trump 'Third Country' Deportation of Men Held in Desert Shipping Container
Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned in a dissent to a previous ruling on the case that the decision exposes "thousands to the risk of torture or death."
Jul 03, 2025
The Supreme Court on Thursday cleared the way for the Trump administration to send eight men deported from the United States and currently in limbo on a U.S. military base in Djibouti to South Sudan, where only one of the deportees is from, under a policy of fast-tracking deportations to third countries.
In an apparent 7-2 unsigned decision, with liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting, the high court lifted an order from U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy blocking the deportation of the men—who are originally from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, South Korea, South Sudan, and Vietnam—to war-torn South Sudan, one of the world's most dangerous countries.
NEW: The U.S. Supreme Court allows the Trump administration to send people subject to deportation to countries they have no connection with that are so dangerous the Trump administration advises Americans not to travel there. The case involves eight men the Trump regime wants to send to South Sudan.
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— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner.bsky.social) July 3, 2025 at 2:29 PM
The men, who have all been convicted of serious crimes in the United States, have been detained for six weeks at Camp Lemonnier, a U.S. base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. They have been nearly constantly shackled and are under constant guard in a shipping container. The container reportedly is equipped with air conditioning.
Neither the United States nor South Sudan has explained what will happen to the men upon their arrival in the East African nation.
Last month, the Supreme Court temporarily lifted Murphy's preliminary injunction, which had enabled migrants to file claims of persecution before their deportation to counties where they have no ties in a highly controversial process called third-country removal.
Dissenting in that ruling, Sotomayor wrote that the ruling exposes "thousands to the risk of torture or death."
The administration then accused Murphy of defying the high court's ruling by insisting that the eight men still could not be sent to South Sudan and asked the justices for the clarification that came with Thursday's decision.
"They're now subject to imminent deportation to war torn South Sudan, a place where they have no ties and where it is possible, if not probable, that they will be arrested and detained upon arrival," Trina Realmuto, an attorney for the men, told Politico Thursday. "This ruling is condoning lawlessness."
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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, told The 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, told Newsweek 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. News reported 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 Africa reported 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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