US judge blocks deportation of Asian migrants

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from expelling Asian migrants — including those from the Philippines — to war-torn Libya after an emergency appeal from the would-be deportees' lawyers.

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."

"The allegedly imminent removals, as reported by news agencies, would clearly violate this court's order," the judge said.

"The Department of Homeland Security may not evade this injunction by ceding control over non-citizens or the enforcement of its immigration responsibilities to any other agency, including but not limited to the Department of Defense," Murphy added.

Reuters, citing US officials, was the first to report that the Trump administration was planning to deport a group of migrants to Libya on a US military plane.

Asked about the report on Wednesday during a White House event, President Donald Trump said he wasn't aware of it.

Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants and invoked an obscure wartime law in March to summarily deport alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador.

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.

"Parallel entities, not subject to legitimacy, could be involved in agreements that do not represent the Libyan state and do not commit it legally or politically," it said in a statement.

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.