A federal judge has ordered that U.S. officials must appear in court Wednesday to identify the migrants impacted by a removal order to South Sudan, as he considers whether their deportations were unlawful.

U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Massachusetts issued the ruling after an emergency hearing, after attorneys for immigrants said the Trump administration appears to have begun deporting people from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan — despite a court order restricting removals to other countries.

Murphy wants to hear from officials when and how the deportees learned they would be removed to a third country, and what opportunity they were given to raise a fear-based claim. He also ruled that the government must provide information about the whereabouts of the migrants apparently already removed.

Murphy said the government must "maintain custody and control of class members currently being removed to South Sudan or to any other third country, to ensure the practical feasibility of return if the Court finds that such removals were unlawful."

While Murphy left the details to the government's discretion, he said he expects the migrants "will be treated humanely."

Attorneys for the migrants told the judge that immigration authorities may have sent up to a dozen people from several countries to Africa, which they argue violates a court order saying people must get a "meaningful opportunity" to argue that sending them to a country outside their homeland would threaten their safety.

The apparent removal of one man from Myanmar was confirmed in an email from an immigration official in Texas, according to court documents. He was informed only in English, a language he does not speak well, and his attorneys learned of the plan hours before his deportation flight, they said.

A woman also reported that her husband from Vietnam and up to 10 other people were flown to Africa on Tuesday morning, attorneys from the National Immigration Litigation Alliance wrote.

The attorneys asked Murphy for an emergency court order to prevent the deportations. Murphy, who was appointed by president Joe Biden, previously found that any plans to deport people to Libya in northern Africa without notice would "clearly" violate his ruling, which also applies to people who have otherwise exhausted their legal appeals.

The Department of Homeland Security and the White House did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

South Sudan on verge of civil war

Some countries do not accept deportations from the United States, which has led the Trump administration to strike agreements with other countries, including Costa Rica and Panama, to house them. The Trump administration has deported several Venezuelans who did not face a criminal trial to a notorious prison in El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law hotly contested in the courts.

South Sudan has suffered repeated waves of violence since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011. Just weeks ago, the country's top UN official warned that fighting between forces loyal to the president and a vice-president threatened to spiral again into full-scale civil war.

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The situation is "darkly reminiscent of the 2013 and 2016 conflicts, which took over 400,000 lives," Nicholas Haysom, head of the almost 20,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission.

The U.S. State Department's annual report on South Sudan, published in April 2024, says "significant human rights issues" include arbitrary killings, disappearances, torture or inhumane treatment by security forces and extensive violence based on gender and sexual identity.

Médecins Sans Frontières, also known as Doctors Without Borders, has reported two deadly attacks on its facilities in April and May, and said that the country's health-care system is on the verge of collapse.

The U.S. Homeland Security Department has given Temporary Protected Status to a small number of South Sudanese already living in the United States since the country was founded in 2011, shielding them from deportation because conditions were deemed unsafe for return. That status is up for renewal in November.

Judge should consider contempt finding: Democrat

Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told CNN in an interview late Tuesday that it was inexplicable" and "cruel" that the administration was even considering South Sudan as a third-country destination.

Murphy should consider holding the administration in contempt of court, he said.

"Violations of court orders ought to be treated with the utmost of sanctions because otherwise, the law is dead letter," said Blumenthal.

Murphy's request comes as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has testified in Congress that the constitutional provision that allows people to legally challenge their detention by the government is actually a tool Donald Trump's administration can use.

Noem at a congressional committee on Tuesday called habeas corpus "a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their rights."

"That's incorrect," said New Hampshire Democrat Maggie Hassan, defining the "legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people." Hassan, a former attorney who practiced in Boston, went on to call habeas corpus "the foundational right that separates free societies like America from police states like North Korea."

The back and forth follows comments by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who said earlier this month that President Donald Trump is looking for ways to expand his administration's legal power to deport migrants who are in the United States illegally. To achieve that, Miller said the administration is "actively looking at" suspending habeas corpus.

The United States has suspended habeas corpus under four distinct circumstances during its history, but not since the years following the Second World War, and those occasions usually involved authorization from Congress.

John Blume, a professor at Cornell Law School, said Noem's response to Hassan was either evidence that she "fundamentally misunderstands habeas corpus" or "was giving an answer she knew was wrong to appease the president."