Second Judge Briefly Stays Deportations to South Sudan

In response to a lawsuit filed late 3 July 2025, Federal District Court Judge Randolph Moss issued an administrative stay to temporarily block the government from sending to South Sudan eight Latin American and Asian men.

The men and their guards have spent six weeks in a shipping container on a USA military base in Djibouti while the government tries to figure out how to provide the credible-fear interviews it promised a different District Court it would conduct there. After getting the Supreme Court to intercede and lift that other court’s order, the Department of Justice intended to send the men to South Sudan at 19:00 Eastern USA time.

Uncertain whether he can properly intervene, Moss transferred the case to federal court in Massachusetts for further proceedings, where the original case was being heard. The stay allows an hour or so for lawyers for the men to contact a judge in Boston for emergency relief.

Moss said on Thursday the Supreme Court refused to step into a related matter. Between that and the back-and-forth happening about the same men in the Boston court, Moss felt he could not take the case.

He noted that although the men are all convicted criminals, they have served their sentences. He found it inappropriate to punish them further by sending them to a place as violent and unstable as South Sudan. The State Department currently has a “do not travel” advisory in place telling Americans not to go there. But Moss could not justify spreading the case through multiple District Courts around the country, so he sent it back to federal District Court Judge Brian Murphy.

Justice Department lawyer Hashim Mooppan said the court battles complicate efforts to deport people when their countries of origin will not accept their return. “It’s going to make foreign countries less likely to engage to accept these transfers.”

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