Judge Scrutinizes U.S. Deportation Flight Said to Be Headed to South Sudan

A federal judge in Boston was holding a hearing on Wednesday to determine whether the Trump administration violated an order he issued last month barring officials from deporting people to countries not their own without first giving them 15 days’ warning.

Eight immigrants had been flown from an airport in Texas to a third country on Tuesday, officials at the Homeland Security Department confirmed at a news conference in Washington as the hearing was set to begin, but they refused to say where the men were headed.

At the hearing, a lawyer for the Justice Department told Judge Brian E. Murphy, who is presiding over the case, that the flight had landed, but that any operational details about where it was or where it was going had to be shared with the court under seal.

But according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, the flight carrying the deportees had landed for now in the east African nation of Djibouti. U.S. military personnel in Djibouti were standing by to assist with securing detainees if needed, one U.S. official said.

Flight-tracking data shows a private jet owned by a company that has previously provided deportation flights left an airport in Harlingen, Texas, on Tuesday around noon. The aircraft, a Gulfstream V, crossed the Atlantic Ocean, stopped at an airport in Shannon, Ireland, and continued on Wednesday morning to Djibouti, where it landed in the early evening. Flight-tracking data shows it was the only U.S.-registered civilian aircraft to land in Djibouti on Wednesday.

Lawyers for some of the deportees said in court on Tuesday evening that their clients had been told that they were ultimately headed to South Sudan.