Federal Judge Questions Deportations to Ghana

A federal judge on Saturday denounced the Trump administration for what she said appeared to be a deliberate scheme to ignore court-ordered protections for a group of deported immigrants who feared persecution in their home countries of Nigeria and Gambia.

But Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia appeared reluctant to order the return of the five migrants to the United States, instead asking the government to submit a sworn statement detailing its efforts to prevent the deportations of the people to their home countries. Repatriating the migrants would violate the protections they had received from immigration judges in the United States.

An emergency hearing in the case on Saturday demonstrated how the Supreme Court had paved the way for the deportation of the five migrants in the case, and for President Trump’s mass deportation campaign more broadly.

Though she appeared highly skeptical of the government’s arguments, Judge Chutkan said that her “hands may be tied,” and expressed doubt that a ruling in the migrants’ favor would survive on appeal, pointing to several recent legal victories for the Trump administration’s deportation policies.

Judge Chutkan ultimately did not instruct the government to take specific action on the five deported migrants, and gave lawyers in the case more time to prepare their arguments. It is unclear if more members of the group of deported migrants will soon be deported to their home countries.

In a recent deal with the Trump administration, Ghana agreed to accept deported migrants with no connection to the West African nation. Federal officials then deported 14 migrants to Ghana last week, five of whom had judges’ orders preventing their deportation to their home countries of Nigeria and Gambia.