An immigrant Filipino stopped in Texas described being awake at 2:30 am Wednesday by armed guards in tactical teams, they told him that they were sending him to Libya, and then waiting for hours on a bus on a military base outside a military plane, his lawyer said.
The flight never took off and was sent back to lone confinement at the Texas facilities along with the other 12 detainees, mainly from Asian countries, said immigrant lawyer, Johnny Syninodis, to NBC News. The immigrant requested anonymity due to fear of reprisals.
Immigrants, including people from the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos and Mexico, would then learn that their lawyers presented an emergency motion after informing that the Trump administration had planned to send a group of immigrants to Libya.
A federal judge then enforced an earlier order on Wednesday afternoon, stopping deportations to third countries.
Tin Nguyen, another immigration lawyer whose client was aboard the bus, said that, although deportation stopped, many continue to the verge of the possibility of being sent to a country that is not familiar with them and has been criticized by the important abuse of human rights.
“Libya or El Salvador or Rwanda … it’s very afraid for people,” said Nguyen, based in North Carolina. “People know nothing about these countries, and what they have heard about them is very scary.”
The National Security Department did not immediately respond to the NBC News request for comments on questions related to deportation flight and legal motion.
Last week, a judge granted a preliminary judicial order, ruling that before eliminating any non -citizen to a third country, the Trump administration must take several measures to ensure that they receive due proper process.
Sinodis said that his client had been counted earlier this week by immigration agents and customs compliance with Libya. Days later, the detainees received a few minutes to gather their belongings before being processed outside the facilities, chained and dragged into a bus, said the lawyer.
The detainees were finally taken back to the installation and released to the general population of the installation the next morning.
Sinodis criticized the process as legally worrying as inefficient. Sending an immigrant from Mexico worldwide, for example, makes little sense, he said.
“I mean, how much money does it cost to send someone from Mexico to Libya?” said. “You can lead someone to Mexico.”
Nguyen counted a chain of events similar, adding that his client, which is Vietnamese, had been threatened with the possibility of being sent to Libya. At one point, the detainee and others were ordered to sign a document that agreed to be deported to the country, according to the emergency motion presented on Wednesday, in which the Nguyen client is a claimant.
“He didn’t read the document. You can’t read [English] And he did not translate in Vietnamese, or through an interpreter. Then he refused to sign, “Nguyen said.” And because he refused to sign, he was separated from other people. ”
The emergency motion said that the detainees who refused to sign the extraction of Libya were placed in separate, handcuffed “rooms and forced to provide their signatures for the document.
After hours in the asphalt, Nguyen said his client called his wife.
“They did not intermingle with the general population or among them, but they could make phone calls,” said Nguyen.
Nguyen said that it is not clear what will happen next, but his client would prefer to be sent back to Vietnam than in a third country.
“This time I am helping people accelerate the process of trying to obtain Vietnam’s travel documents, so that people can go to Vietnam,” said the lawyer.
The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, said last month at a cabinet meeting that the United States is “actively looking for other countries to take people.”
“We are working with other countries to say: ‘We want to send some of the most despicable human beings to their countries,” said Rubio. “‘Will you do it as a favor for us?’ And the farther, the better, so they cannot return through the border. “
The reports of plans to send migrants to Libya attracted a violent reaction of immigration and humanitarian defenders.
Libya has been criticized for a long time for her migrants treatment. The Independent Fact Research Mission in Libya, established by the United Nations Human Rights Council, found in its 2023 report that it was likely that “crimes against humanity were committed against libios and migrants throughout Libya.”
The report documented examples of “arbitrary detention, murder, torture, rape, slavery, sexual slavery, extrajudicial murder and forced disappearance, confirming its generalized practice in Libya.”
The State Department’s website warned against Libya, classifying the country as under a level 4, the highest level of advice due to a “greater probability of potentially mortal risks.”
The provisional government of the National Unity of Libya said on social networks that it does not coordinate deportations with the United States and that it rejects the use of the country as a destination for deported immigrants without their knowledge or consent.
“The government categorically denies the existence of any agreement or coordination with it with respect to the reception of any deported migrant from the United States,” he said.
