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Straits Times
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Straits Times
Migrants told of Libya deportation waited hours on tarmac, attorney says
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Customs and Border Protection security agents guide detained migrants to board a U.S. Air Force C-17 Globemaster III aircraft for a removal flight at Fort Bliss, Texas, U.S. January 23, 2025. Dept. of Defense/U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Nicholas J. De La Pena/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo WASHINGTON - Migrants in Texas who were told they would be deported to Libya sat on a military airfield tarmac for hours on Wednesday, unsure of what would happen next, an attorney for one of the men told Reuters. The attorney, Tin Thanh Nguyen, said his client, a Vietnamese construction worker from Los Angeles, was among the migrants woken in the early morning hours and bused from an immigration detention center in Pearsall, Texas, to an airfield where a military aircraft awaited them. After several hours, they were bused back to the detention center around noon, the attorney said on Thursday. The Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment. Reuters was first to report that U.S. President Donald Trump's administration was poised to deport migrants to Libya, a move that would escalate his immigration crackdown which has already drawn legal backlash. Officials earlier this week told Reuters the U.S. military could fly the migrants to the North African country as soon as Wednesday, but stressed that plans could change. A U.S. official told Reuters the flight never departed. As of Friday, it was unclear if the administration was still planning to proceed with the deportations. A federal judge in Boston ruled on Wednesday that any effort by the Trump administration to deport non-Libyan migrants to Libya without adequate screenings for possible persecution or torture would clearly violate a prior court order. Lawyers for a group of migrants pursuing a class action lawsuit had made an emergency request to the court hours after the news broke of the potential flight to Libya. SOLITARY CONFINEMENT Nguyen, who declined to name his client, said the man was told on Monday to sign a document agreeing to be deported to Libya. The man, who does not read English well, declined to sign it and was placed in solitary confinement and shackled along with four or five other men, the attorney said. The man was never provided an opportunity to express a fear of being deported to Libya as required under federal immigration law and the recent judicial order, Nguyen said. "They said, 'We're deporting you to Libya,' even though he hadn't signed the form, he didn't know what the form was," Nguyen said. Nguyen said his client, originally from Vietnam, has lived in the U.S. since the 1990s but was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement earlier this year during a regular check-in. Vietnam declines to accept some deportees and processes deportation paperwork slowly, Nguyen said, making it harder for the U.S. to send deportees there. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
NM delegation objects to detaining immigrants at military installations
In this handout provided by the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Customs and Border Protection security agents guide immigrants onboard a removal flight at Fort Bliss, Texas, on Jan. 23, 2025. (Dept. of Defense photo by U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Nicholas J. De La Pena) New Mexico's all Democratic congressional delegation on Thursday wrote a letter to President Donald Trump objecting to reported plans by the Department of Defense to use Fort Bliss and Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico for immigrant detention by Homeland Security. NPR obtained an internal memo that described how Fort Bliss would first detain up to 1,000 immigrants during an interim evaluation period, but eventually hold as many as 10,000 immigrants and serve as 'central hub for deportation operations,' and a model for other facilities around the country. 'Using our military installations for these purposes threatens to divert DoD's resources away from unit readiness and our national security enterprise,' the letter said. 'This is a direct contradiction to your Administration's statement earlier this year that one of your top priorities is to 'have a ready, able, and lethal military.'' In addition to the 'numerous missions' Kirtland hosts, it also is the home of Sandia National Laboratories, 'which is integral to the maintenance and modernization of our nuclear stockpile and develops technologies that support energy resilience for civilian and military applications,' the letter said. Newly appointed Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently visited both Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratory. U.S. Energy Secretary Wright tours New Mexico national labs In addition to detailing the strain holding immigrants in military installations places on the defense department's resources, the letter noted that 'detaining children on military installations' violates the 'principal purpose' of a settlement of a class action lawsuit, as well as New Mexico law. 'Leveraging legal loopholes to bypass state oversight of the well-being of detained undocumented children, who are often fleeing violence in their home countries, is entirely unacceptable,' the letter said. 'The administration's callous indifference toward federal and state law is especially concerning, given that the last time migrant children were detained at Fort Bliss staff described the facility as 'filthy, overly loud, and prone to flooding and dust storms.''
