4 days ago
Trump's Ambition Collides With Law on Sending Migrants to Dangerous Countries
As the Trump administration ships migrants to countries around the world, it is abandoning a longstanding U.S. policy of not sending people to places where they would be at risk of torture and other persecution.
The principle emerged in international human rights law after World War II and is also embedded in U.S. domestic law. It is called 'non-refoulement,' derived from a French word for return.
The issue came into sharp relief in the past month as the Trump administration has tried to deport migrants with criminal records to Libya and South Sudan, countries considered so dangerous that they are on the State Department's 'do not travel' list.
'What the U.S. is doing runs afoul of the bedrock prohibition in U.S. and international law of non-refoulement,' said Robert K. Goldman, the faculty director of the War Crimes Research Office at American University's law a recent affidavit, Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the Trump administration's efforts to send migrants to those two countries as part of a diplomatic push to improve relations. He acknowledged that the Libyan capital, Tripoli, was wracked by violence and critics of the administration, the sworn statement shows that the United States is no longer considering whether a deportee is more likely than not to be at risk of abuse through repatriation or transfer to a third country.
State Department employees were also recently told to stop noting in annual human rights reports whether a nation had violated its obligations not to send anyone 'to a country where they would face torture or persecution.'
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