A U.S. district judge has denied the Trump administration’s request to send Asian migrants to war-torn Libya following an urgent appeal by the attorneys for the potential deportees.
District Judge Brian Murphy said such deportations would violate his previous order that migrants being sent to a country other than their own first be given a “meaningful” opportunity to challenge their removal in court and show that they may face persecution.
Murphy’s ruling came in response to an emergency motion from lawyers for migrants from Laos, the Philippines and Vietnam who said they were in “imminent” danger of being deported to Libya — “a county notorious for its human rights violations.”
Federal judges have since blocked further deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which was last used to round up Japanese-American citizens during World War II.
Libya’s Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU) denied meanwhile that it had reached a deal with Washington to take in migrants expelled from the United States.
Libya is split between the UN-recognized GNU in the west and a rival administration backed by military strongman Khalifa Haftar that rules from Benghazi and Tobruk in the east.
The eastern government’s foreign ministry on Wednesday also issued a statement “denying the existence of any agreement or understanding concerning the settlement of migrants of any nationality.”
Libya has been gripped by unrest since the 2011 overthrow and killing of longtime ruler Muammar Qaddafi.
