US judge blocks deportation of PH, other Asian migrants to Libya

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stand near a gate at Delaney Hall, a newly converted immigrant detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey May 7, 2025. Delaney Hall has the ability to hold over 1,000 people, and the detention facility, privately owned by The GEO Group, holds a contract with the federal government to house people arrested by ICE. — Photo by Agence France-Presse

A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from expelling Asian migrants, including Filipinos, 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.”

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

“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.

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 Moamer Kadhafi./das