(Fixes typographical error in headline, please read “she lacks” instead of “he lacks”)
By Ted Hesson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge on Monday night sharply criticized the Trump administration for deporting five migrants from Nigeria and Gambia to Ghana, but said she lacked jurisdiction to take up a related lawsuit.
In a 16-page order, Washington, D.C.-based District Judge Tanya Chutkan said advocacy groups representing the migrants failed to demonstrate why the case should be before her. The Supreme Court ruled in June that the Trump administration could deport migrants to third countries while a legal challenge proceeds before a lower-court judge in Boston.
Still, Chutkan said the deportations of the West African migrants appeared to be an attempt to skirt U.S. immigration courts by quickly sending them to another nation.
“Defendants’ actions in this case appear to be taken in disregard of or despite its obligations to provide individuals present in the United States with due process and to treat even those who are subject to removal humanely,” she wrote.
President Donald Trump’s administration has ramped up deportations of migrants to third countries as a way to speed up removals and compel departure of immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama said last week that his nation struck an agreement with the U.S. to accept West African deportees and had already received 14 people.
Tricia McLaughlin, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, denied that the Trump administration had ignored immigration law by suddenly sending the migrants to Ghana.
“All of these illegal aliens deported to Ghana received due process and had a final order of removal from an immigration judge,” she said, adding that many had criminal convictions, including injury to a child, robbery, aggravated assault, and fraud.
The five plaintiffs had U.S. legal protections against deportation to their home countries, but were deported to Ghana, which intended to send then to the home countries of Nigeria and Gambia, the lawsuit said. One of the migrants, a bisexual man, had already been sent to Gambia and was in hiding, it said.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson; Editing by David Gregorio)
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