The Filipino immigrant detained in Texas said he was awakened by armed tactical equipment security guards at 2:30am on Wednesday, and was reportedly sent to Libya, where he was waiting for hours on a bus at a military base outside the military, his lawyer said.
The flight never took off, so he was sent back to isolated confinement at a Texas facility, with 12 other detainees, immigration lawyer Johnny Sinodis, told NBC News. The immigrants demanded anonymity because of fear of retaliation.
Immigrants, including those in the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos and Mexico, will later learn that their lawyers have filed an emergency motion after reports that the Trump administration had planned to send groups of immigrants to Libya.
A federal judge then enacted an earlier order Wednesday afternoon and halted deportation to third countries.
Ting Nguyen, another immigration lawyer whose client was on the bus, said despite the halt of deportation, many have been sent to countries unfamiliar with them, and continue to have the advantage in the possibility that they are being criticized for major human rights abuses.
“Libya or El Salvador or Rwanda… that’s very scary for people,” said Nguyen, based in North Carolina. “People don’t know anything about these countries. It’s very scary to hear about them.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment on questions relating to NBC News’ deportation flight and legal motion.
Last week, a judge granted a preliminary injunction and determined that the Trump administration must take several steps to receive appropriate due process before taking non-citizens to third countries.
Sinodis said his client was told by an immigration and customs enforcement agent earlier this week that he was being sent to Libya. A few days later, detainees were given minutes to collect their belongings before being processed from the facility, and were tied up to a bus and shuffled, the lawyer said.
The detainees were eventually returned to the facility and released to the facility’s general population by the following morning.
Sinodis criticized the process as legally concerned and inefficient. For example, sending immigrants from Mexico all over the world makes little sense, he said.
“How much does it cost to send someone from Mexico to Libya?” he said. “You can take someone to Mexico.”
Nguyen recounted a similar series of events, adding that his Vietnamese client had been threatened with the prospect that he would be sent to Libya earlier. At one point, detainees and others were ordered to sign documents agreeing to be deported to the state, according to an emergency motion filed Wednesday.
“He had not read the documents. He couldn’t read them. [English] And it was not translated in Vietnamese or through an interpreter. So he refused to sign it,” Nguyen said. “And he refused to sign, and he was separated from the others.”
The emergency mobilization said detainees who refused to register for the removal in Libya were placed in separate rooms, “cuffing” and forced to provide signatures on the documents.
After opening hours at Tarmac, Nguyen said his client had called his wife.
“They weren’t mixed with the general population or with each other, but they were able to make the phone calls,” says Nguyen.
Nguyen said it’s unclear what will happen next, but his client would like to be sent back to Vietnam rather than to a third country.
“This time, people are helping to speed up the process of actually trying to get travel documents from Vietnam, so people can just go to Vietnam,” the lawyer said.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a cabinet meeting last month that the US would “take people out there looking for other countries.”
“We’re working with other countries to say, ‘We want to send you some of the sleazy people to your country,” Rubio said. “‘Do you do that as a boon to us?” And they can’t come back across the border, as far as they are better. ”
Reports of plans to send immigrants to Libya have elicited resentment from immigrants and humanitarian advocates.
Libya has long been criticized for treating immigrants. An independent fact-finding mission in Libya, established by the UN Human Rights Council, founded in a report from 2023 that it is likely that “crimes against humanity have been committed against Libyans and immigrants throughout Libya.”
The report documented examples of “arbitrary detention, murder, torture, rape, enslavement, sexual slavery, extrajudicial killing, and enforced loss of failure.”
The Department’s own website warned against travel to Libya and categorized the country under level 4 because it “is likely to be a greater chance of life-threatening risk.”
Libya’s interim national unification government has said on social media that it has not coordinated deportation with the US and will refuse to use the country as a destination for deported migrants without knowledge or consent.
“The government is firmly denying the existence of an agreement or adjustment regarding the acceptance of immigrants deported from the United States,” he said.
This story first appeared on nbcnews.com. More from NBC News:
Source link
