ICE officers stuck in Djibouti shipping container with deported migrants

Nearly a dozen immigration officers and eight deportees are sick and stranded in a metal shipping container in the searing-hot East African nation of Djibouti, where they face the constant threat of malaria and rocket attacks from nearby Yemen, according to a federal court filing issued Thursday.

A federal judge in Boston interrupted an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation flight taking immigrants from Cuba, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Mexico to South Sudan more than two weeks ago. U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy said the flight violated his order prohibiting officials from sending immigrants to countries where they aren’t citizens without a chance to ask for humanitarian protection. He instructed officials to arrange screenings.

Trump officials could have flown the immigrants back to the United States. Instead, they were taken to Djibouti, where in late May officers turned a Conex container into a makeshift detention facility on U.S. Naval Base Camp Lemonnier, according to Mellissa Harper, a top ICE official, who detailed the conditions Thursday in a required status update to the judge.

Three officers and eight detainees arrived at the only U.S. military base in Africa unprepared for what awaited them. Defense officials warned them of “imminent danger of rocket attacks from terrorist groups in Yemen,” but the ICE officers did not pack body armor or other gear to protect themselves. Temperatures soar past 100 degrees during the day. At night, she wrote, a “smog cloud” forms in the windless sky, filled with rancid smoke from nearby burning pits where residents incinerate trash and human waste.

The Trump administration has urged the Supreme Court to stay Murphy’s April order requiring screenings under the Convention Against Torture, which Congress ratified in 1994 to bar the U.S. government from sending people to countries where they might face torture. In a filing in that case Thursday, officials told the Supreme Court that Murphy’s order violates their authority to deport immigrants to third countries if their homelands refuse to take them back, particularly if they are serious offenders who might otherwise be released in the United States.

Officials said the conditions in Djibouti highlight the dangers of Murphy’s order.

“A small number of ICE personnel are currently guarding dangerous criminals around-the-clock in a converted conference room, under threat of rocket attacks and other security and health hazards – disrupting the base’s operations, consuming critical resources intended for service members, and harming national security,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the filing.

In her declaration, Harper said officers and detainees began to suffer symptoms of a bacterial upper-respiratory infection soon after deplaning, including “coughing, difficulty breathing, fever and achy joints.”

Medication wasn’t immediately available. She wrote that the flight nurse has since obtained treatments such as inhalers, Tylenol, eye drops and nasal spray, but they cannot get tested for the illness to properly treat it.

“It is unknown how long the medical supply will last,” Harper wrote.

The officers spend their days guarding eight immigrants convicted of crimes that include murder, attempted murder, sex offenses and armed robbery, court records show. Harper said Defense Department employees “have expressed frustration” about staying in close proximity to violent offenders.

Harper said ICE has had to deploy more officers available to work in “deleterious” conditions to give the initial crew a break. Eleven officers are assigned to guard the immigrants and two others “support the medical staff,” she said. They work 12-hour shifts guarding immigrants, taking them to get medication, and to use the restroom and the shower in a nearby trailer, one at a time. Officers pat down the detainees, searching them for contraband.

At night and on breaks, officers sleep on bunk beds in a trailer, with one storage locker apiece. Some wear N95 masks even while they sleep, because the air is so polluted it irritates their throats and makes it difficult to breathe. The area is dimly lit, which Harper wrote poses a security risk to the officers.

Department of Homeland Security officials seized on the court filings to criticize the judge.

“This Massachusetts District judge is putting the lives of our ICE law enforcement in danger by stranding them in (Djibouti) without proper resources, lack of medical care, and terrorists who hate Americans running rampant,” said DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin on X. “Our @ICEgov officers were only supposed to transport for removal 8 convicted criminals with final deportation orders who were so monstrous and barbaric that no other country would take them. This is reprehensible and, quite frankly, pathological.”

But a lawyer for the detainees said they are also worried about their health, whether they are shackled and the circumstances that DHS has created for them.

“We’re increasingly concerned about the conditions of the detainees,” said Trina Realmuto, an attorney for the deportees.

Murphy had said DHS abruptly launched the deportation flight even though it plainly violated his April 18 preliminary injunction barring them from removing people without due process. Federal law prohibits sending anyone – even criminals – to countries where they might be persecuted or tortured.

Although McLaughlin said officials couldn’t deport them to their home countries, Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said at a news conference last month that the U.S. government did not inform her of the Mexican national sent to Djibouti, Jesus Munoz Gutierrez, who was convicted of second-degree murder in Florida 20 years ago, court records show.

She said the U.S. would have to follow protocols to bring him to Mexico, if he wishes to be repatriated, and she said he could be detained upon arrival. She said Mexico is reviewing the case.

Murphy has also ordered the government to return a gay Guatemalan man who was deported to Mexico, where he said he had been kidnapped. The man returned Wednesday.