Sending People…to Libya?!

The latest escalation by the Trump White House opens a horrifying new battle over migrants’ rights and the rule of law.

Photo courtesy of PBS

The Trump White House has opened a new front in its terror campaign against migrants: sending plane loads of people to Libya.

To date, the Trump administration had been transporting migrants of various nationalities primarily to third party Central American countries, most notoriously the CECOT prison in El Salvador but also to a high rise hotel in Panama City, where some migrants languished for weeks before being sent on to a camp for processing.

Now it has declared it will send—and in fact has attempted to send—migrants to third party countries outside of the Americas including to Libya. The White House reportedly is also in talks with Saudi Arabia and Rwanda to accept migrants, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he is “actively searching” for countries to take in “some of the most despicable human beings.” (There is no evidence any of the people bound for Libya, or that most of those sent to CECOT in El Salvador, committed any crimes.)

These nations are infamous for their human rights abuses and records of atrocities. Yet, as with El Salvador, their leaders may see an opportunity to curry favor with this administration by essentially acting as our jailers, while the White House washes its hands of responsibility.

So when lawyers for migrants detained by ICE learned on Wednesday that the government was planning to send their clients to Libya, they raced to the federal courthouse, yet again, to obtain a court order to stop all such flights. If these planes left U.S. airspace, we’d have another El Salvador situation, where the government effectively could “disappear” innocents into a notorious foreign system with no safeguards or accountability.

A mad scramble to save lives

“Multiple credible sources report that flights are preparing to immediately depart the United States carrying class members for removal to Libya,” attorneys for the detained migrants wrote. At stake were the lives and liberties of migrants from Asian Pacific nations including Vietnam, Laos and the Philippines.

The lawyers had heard from migrants in South Texas, who said that immigration officials had attempted to coerce them into agreeing to be deported to Libya. “When they all refused, they were each put in a separate room and cuffed in (basically, solitary) in order to get them to sign it,” wrote a lawyer with the National Immigration Litigation Alliance.

Attorneys filed an emergency motion before the federal district court in Boston, where Judge Brian E. Murphy sits. He has been presiding over an ongoing challenge to the government's attempts to deport migrants to third countries where they are not even citizens. The government has attempted these deportations without first giving the migrants a “meaningful opportunity” to seek humanitarian protection in the United States.

As Judge Murphy noted, the Supreme Court recently held unanimously that migrants must at least receive due process in the form of a habeas proceeding before being deported.

Back in late March, Judge Murphy issued a preliminary injunction blocking such third country deportations. His two-page order was very clear. He ruled that officials may not deport someone to a third country “unless and until” they provide written notice to the deportee and their lawyer identifying the country to which they are being sent.

Then, the government must let them apply before an immigration judge for protection to stay in the U.S. under the Convention Against Torture. That agreement, ratified by Congress back in 1994, forbids the government from sending immigrants to a country where they might suffer torture.

After that, the judge said, all parties must await a final decision from an immigration judge before any third country deportation can take place.

The government had Judge Murphy’s order, understood its scope, and still shrugged its shoulders. The administration understands that if it had to do everything Judge Murphy’s way, it would take a long time to adequately process each migrant. And Trump doesn’t want his plan for mass deportations stalled in the courts.

So on Wednesday the government proceeded to attempt to deport migrants to Libya anyway, violating every part of Judge Murphy’s order.

In response, the judge issued a stern reminder to the Trump administration: You cannot deport migrants to any country without due process. He issued a “reminder” to the administration that he had already ruled on this question and that the attempted deportations “blatantly” defied the injunction he had previously issued.

“If there is any doubt — the Court sees none — the allegedly imminent removals, as reported by news agencies and as Plaintiffs seek to corroborate with class-member accounts and public information, would clearly violate this Court’s Order,” wrote Judge Murphy.

The planes remained on the ground, for now.

Libya? Really?!

Libya is a country notorious for human rights violations, especially against migrants. Because the country often serves as a passageway between Africa and Europe, its migrant centers have swelled with occupants.

After a civil war broke out there in 2011, the country fell under the control of by two factions: Eastern Libya (with its vast oil reserves) is run by a military strongman, while Western Libya is run by a U.N. recognized government.

Doctors Without Borders issued a report in 2023 on the Abu Salim and Ain Zara detention centers in Tripoli, where “thousands of people, including women and children, continue to be arbitrarily detained.” That report found that “refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants have been assaulted, sexually abused, beaten, and killed” in the centers. It continued, “They have also been systematically deprived of the most basic humane living conditions, including sufficient access to food, water, sanitation, and medical care.”

Our own State Department advises against travel to Libya, citing the risk of “crime, terrorism, unexploded land mines, civil unrest, kidnapping, and armed conflict.” Last year, it described conditions in detention facilities there as “harsh and life-threatening” and even noted that immigrants had no access to courts or due process.

Yet Libya is where they want to send migrants from other countries? It’s not hard to conclude the administration sees the deplorable conditions there as a major plus for its terror campaign against migrants.

When reports of the planned flight emerged, reporters sought confirmation from both factions within Libya that some arrangements had in fact been made. But the Libyan National Unity government and the break-away Libyan National Army both claimed that there is no agreement in place to send migrants to the country. Then they promptly accused each other of working with the Trump White House to bring disgrace to the nation.

This raises an interesting question: Who has been working behind the scenes to arrange for flights of migrants to Libya? Given that this is the Trump administration, one possibility points directly to Massad Boulos, the father-in-law of (checks notes) Tiffany Trump.

I’ve never written about Tiffany Trump before and honestly hoped I wouldn’t ever have to. But Donald Trump named her father-in-law Boulos as a senior advisor for Arab and Middle Eastern affairs, and now suddenly there are some critical pieces moving on the board.

The warlord Khalifa Haftar, a Libyan American who controls Eastern Libya, released a statement rejecting the idea of accepting deportees. But his son, Saddam Haftar, visited Washington just last week. There, he met with Boulos at the State Department, though it’s not clear what was discussed. The timing of the visit, however, suggests a connection between those talks and a plane full of migrants set to fly to Libya. If not, then wow, the universe sure has some strange coincidences.

The migrant shell game

Judges and civil rights attorneys have their hands full trying to keep this administration in line, especially when it comes to its draconian and unconstitutional policies, its flouting or even defiance of court orders, and its documented abuses of migrants.

A clear example is the shell game it has played, using different departments to hide or pass the ball. This administration evaded direct court orders to Homeland Security to stop deporting migrants to El Salvador by handing migrants over to the Defense Department. It then claimed the latter was not bound by earlier orders, and it used that logic to transport migrants from Guantanamo in Cuba to third countries, including El Salvador.

Nice try, but no, said Judge Murphy, once again.

Further, Homeland Security may be operating these flights and deportations without any authority or even knowledge of Trump himself. For example, the president did not appear to know the flight to Libya was even happening. On Wednesday, when he spoke to reporters from the Oval Office, he told reporters that he was unaware of the flights and added, “You’ll have to ask Homeland Security.”

This continues Trump’s strategy of evading direct questions by passing them off to his subordinates. He even refused during an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker over the weekend to affirm that he would uphold the Constitution, answering “I don’t know” and referring to his “brilliant lawyers” who he said he was sure would follow the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The problem is, his underlings are very much not obeying the rule of law or direct court orders, setting up a showdown with the judiciary with increasingly likely contempt proceedings and findings. Further, they profess ignorance or attempt to hide the truth when asked. After Trump professed ignorance and told reporters to ask Homeland Security about the Libya flights, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said during a news conference in Illinois that she “can’t confirm” the media reports of plans to remove people to that country.

In other words, no one is in charge, and no one knows anything, yet somehow these deportations are happening.

Playing politics, sending a terrifying message

So why send planes bearing migrants all the way to Libya in the first place?

First, Stephen Miller, Tom Homan and Kristi Noem want to thumb their noses at the courts. They want to force judges and lawyers to work overtime to stop them, and then claim that the country is under judicial tyranny when the judges actually follow the law. Tweeted Miller upon hearing of the judge’s “reminder” not to violate his existing ruling by handing migrants off to the Defense Department, “Another judge puts himself in charge of the Pentagon. This is a judicial coup.”

Second, they want to make examples of whole groups of innocents in order to traumatize migrants and their families and communities. After all, the number of migrants the administration could put on planes bound for third world countries is miniscule. It’s only a small fraction of the millions they hope to mass deport. But the threat of outsized punishment for mere undocumented status sends a message to those already here, and it serves a horrific deterrent for any who are considering coming.

To achieve this level of terror, the administration is intentionally putting scores of innocent people through hell and making a big, public scene of it to drive its point home.

When people say of the Trump administration, “The cruelty is the point,” this is exactly what they mean.