US: Mom-daughter deportation halted

An angry judge has ordered US authorities to bring back a woman and her daughter who had been put on a plane and sent back to their country before court hearings were over on their asylum status.

“It’s outrageous,” Judge Emmet Sullivan of a Washington DC district court said on Thursday. “I’m also directing the government to turn that plane around either now or when it lands, turn that plane around and bring those people back to the United States.”

Homeland security department officials later said they complied with the order. The plane carrying the deported woman, who has been identified only as “Carmen” in court papers, and her daughter, had landed in El Salvador, but they did not disembark and the plane was turned around to bring them back. They returned to the US by Thursday night. The judge also threatened to hold attorney general Jeff Sessions in contempt. The Trump administration has rewritten the rules to define who qualifies for political asylum, and fleeing domestic abuse or gang violence is no longer ground enough to grant asylum. The administration has argued the system was being gamed by foreigners to enter the US.

Thursday’s ruling came on a plea filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has challenged the new rules.

“We are thrilled the stay of removal was issued but sickened that the government deported two of our clients — a mom and her little girl — in the early morning hours,” the ACLU’s lead attorney on the case, Jennifer Chang Newell, had said earlier. “We will not rest until our clients are returned to safety.”

Carmen and her daughter had fled El Salvador domestic violence and death threats from gangs and sought asylum in the US. ACLU said Carmen suffered “two decades of horrific sexual abuse by her husband.”