On Wednesday afternoon, a federal judge in Boston blocked the Trump administration from deporting immigrants in the United States to Libya or Saudi Arabia. The temporary restraining order (TRO), issued by District Judge Brian E. Murphy, requires the government to provide written notice to immigrants and their attorneys regarding any planned deportations, as well as a “meaningful opportunity” to apply for protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT).

Judge Murphy wrote:

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.

The request for an emergency TRO was filed earlier that same day by lawyers with the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project and Human Rights First. In their request the lawyers wrote that they had received “alarming reports” that their clients, who are of Laotian, Vietnamese and Philippine descent, were being “prepared for removal to Libya.”

The lawyers warned that anyone removed to Libya

faces a strong likelihood of imprisonment, followed by torture and even disappearance or death. … For years, Libya has been notorious for widespread and systemic abuses of migrants from other countries by state security forces, as well as militias and non-state armed groups.

Quoting Amnesty International, the lawyers wrote that migrants in Libya are

trapped in a cycle of serious human rights violations and abuses, including prolonged arbitrary detention and other unlawful deprivation of liberty, torture and other ill-treatment, unlawful killings, rape and other sexual violence, forced labor, and exploitation at the hands of state and non-state actors in a climate of near-total impunity.

In the motion, the lawyers wrote that their clients were being prepared for deportation despite not receiving the required notice or an opportunity to apply for CAT protection. They also noted that the motion should not have been necessary, as the judge had already issued a preliminary injunction in the case, blocking deportations without notice or a chance to appeal. However, the lawyers wrote, “multiple credible sources report that flight(s) are preparing to immediately depart the United States carrying class members for removal to Libya.”

In their motion, the plaintiffs wrote that, in addition to Libya, at least “one detainee—a citizen of Laos—reported that he had been verbally informed he was to be removed imminently to Saudi Arabia on a military flight.”

The thuggish and inhumane tactics employed by the immigration Gestapo to facilitate the banishment of immigrants to foreign gulags—where they face mistreatment and possible enslavement—were detailed in the motion. Citing a recent Reuters report, the lawyers described how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents at a South Texas detention facility used the threat of solitary confinement to coerce immigrants into signing documents that would fast-track their removal to Libya.

The lawyers wrote that ICE thugs gathered six migrants into a room and told them they needed to sign a document 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.

Following the US-NATO bombing of Libya in 2011, the country has been locked in a protracted civil war and is now divided between two competing governments. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that both governments—including the one in Tripoli, which controls western Libya, and the rival Benghazi-based administration led by CIA-backed warlord Khalifa Hifter—have denied accepting immigrants.

However, the Times noted that last week, Khalifa Hifter’s son, Saddam, who also serves as the deputy general commander of the military in eastern Libya, was in Washington. He met with several Trump administration officials, and it is possible that the eastern Libyan military struck its own deal with the United States.

Judge Murphy’s ruling was one of several issued in the last 48 hours blocking the Trump administration’s efforts to kidnap and exile immigrants to foreign gulags without due process. On Tuesday, District Judge Alvin Hellerstein barred the administration from deporting Venezuelan immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act, writing that the government had failed to prove the United States was, in fact, under a military “invasion.”

The ruling follows a similar decision issued last week by Trump-appointed District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. in Brownsville, Texas, which also found that the administration had improperly invoked the Act, as the United States was not facing a military “invasion” or “predatory incursion.”

Judge Hellerstein observed that Venezuelan immigrants sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) “endure abuse and inhumane treatment with no recourse to bring them back.”

Hellerstein wrote:

The destination, El Salvador—a country paid to take our aliens—is neither the country from which the aliens came, nor to which they wish to be removed. ... But they are taken there, and there to remain, indefinitely, in a notoriously evil jail, unable to communicate with counsel, family, or friends.

Also on Tuesday District Judge Charlotte Sweeney in Colorado granted a preliminary injunction blocking Venezuelans in her jurisdiction from being deported under the AEA. Like Hellerstein, she ruled the Trump administration arguments that the US was under an “invasion” were “unpersuasive” and those sent to El Salvador faced “irreparable harm” inside CECOT.

In the face of these court rulings in multiple states, all of them finding that his administration is pursuing illegal and unconstitutional, effectively criminal, methods in its persecution of immigrants, Trump responded Wednesday with a social media post threatening the courts. He wrote:

Our Court System is not letting me do the job I was Elected to do. Activist judges must let the Trump Administration deport murderers, and other criminals who have come into our Country illegally, WITHOUT DELAY!!!

One of the men deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act in March was Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father of three. Despite the US Supreme Court ordering his return last month, the Trump administration has refused to return him or provide updates to the court on what steps they have taken to “facilitate” his release. As of this writing, Abrego Garcia remains incarcerated in El Salvador, although he is no longer in CECOT.

In a court hearing Wednesday, Trump Justice Department lawyers invoked the “state secrets” privilege to justify not providing District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland updates on what actions the government has or has not taken to return Abrego Garcia. The state secrets principle, which argues that the government does not have to provide information in legal cases if there is a “reasonable danger” that disclosing such information would harm “national security,” was recognized by the Supreme Court in 1953.

In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Attorney General Pam Bondi endorsed invoking state secrets privilege to block disclosing information to Judge James E. Boasberg concerning the deportation flights to El Salvador. Neither Boasberg nor Xinis has ruled on whether they consider the government’s invocation of the principle to be valid.

Even with these setbacks in the courts, the immigration Gestapo continues to kidnap and detain workers and their family members, the vast majority of whom have committed no serious crimes. On Wednesday, ABC9 in Georgia reported that a 19-year-old college student who has lived in the US since she was a toddler, and her father, are both facing deportation after being arrested on separate minor traffic violations.

Ximena Arias-Cristobal, 19, and her father, Jose Fransciso Arias-Tovar, are both being held at the ICE Stewart Detention Center outside Columbus, Georgia. Arias-Tovar was sent to the facility after being arrested for driving 19 miles over the speed limit, while Arias-Cristobal was incarcerated at the center after she made a right turn on a red light.

Speaking to ABC9, Arias-Cristobal’s mother told the outlet her husband tried to obtain a work visa but was unable to, while her daughter was not eligible to register for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program because entry into it was closed shortly after they came to the US in 2010.

Conditions inside the overwhelmingly for-profit facilities are inhumane and deadly. On Monday, El Pais reported that within the first 100 days of the Trump administration at least seven people had died in ICE custody, including six men and one woman, all between the ages of 27 and 55.

Among the dead was Marie Ange Blaise, a 44-year-old Haitian woman, who died on April 25. That same day she had previously notified guards that she was suffering from severe chest pain. Despite discovering Blaise was suffering from hypertension, guards did not take her to a hospital and instead gave her some pills and told her to rest. A few hours later, she notified guards she was in extreme pain, screaming, “My chest! My chest!” and at 8:35 p.m. she was pronounced dead.

Brayan Rayo-Garzón, 27, is the youngest person identified so far to have died in ICE custody during the first 100 days of the Trump administration. After immigrating to the US in 2023 with his family from Venezuela, Rayo-Garzón was arrested by St. Louis Metropolitan Police officers this past March on accusations of credit card fraud and transferred to ICE custody in the Phelps County Jail.

On April 7, Rayo-Garzón’s mother, Lucy Garzón, received a call from the Phelps County Jail informing her that her son “tried to take his own life ... his situation is critical, and he may die tomorrow.” The next day Lucy was told by doctors her son was brain-dead.