A Mexican man deported from the US and sent to South Sudan returned to Mexico on Saturday, in keeping with South Sudanese officers.
Ambassador Apuk Ayuel Mayen, spokesperson for South Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, confirmed J. Jesus Muñoz Gutierrez’s “smooth and orderly” departure throughout a press convention at Juba International Airport on Saturday.
Muñoz was launched into the custody of the Mexican ambassador-designate to South Sudan, Alejandro Estivill, Mayen mentioned. NCS has reached out to Mexico’s Foreign Ministry for remark.
Addressing reporters in Juba earlier than stepping aboard a airplane, Muñoz mentioned he “felt kidnapped” by the US when he was despatched to South Sudan.
“I was not planning to come to South Sudan, but while I was here, they treated me well,” Muñoz instructed reporters. “I finished my time in the United States, and they were supposed to return me to Mexico. Instead, they wrongfully sent me to South Sudan.”
NCS has reached out to the US Department of Homeland Security for touch upon Muñoz’ characterization of his deportation.
Muñoz was one in all eight folks deported from the US and despatched to east Africa in May. He and the opposite deportees had been initially diverted to Djibouti, the place they had been held in a transformed Conex transport container on a army base whereas the Trump administration fought for greater than a month in federal court docket to ship them to South Sudan.
Lawyers for the eight detainees – who got here from Cuba, Laos, Vietnam and different nations, together with Mexico – had argued that they might face harmful bodily circumstances in South Sudan, which has struggled with intercommunal violence since its independence in 2011.
By early July, a Supreme Court ruling and a subsequent interpretation by a federal court docket in Massachusetts allowed the federal government to ship the eight to the war-torn east African nation.
“Law and order prevails,” Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said on X following the choice.
Six of the eight authentic deportees stay in custody in South Sudan, Mayen mentioned, and the South Sudanese authorities is working with their respective dwelling governments to repatriate them. One deportee, a South Sudanese citizen, was freed earlier, the Associated Press reported Saturday.
Beyond South Sudan, the Trump administration can also be coordinating US deportations with different African nations together with Rwanda, Uganda and Eswatini. While Rwanda lately reached an settlement to soak up as much as 250 migrants deported from the US, Uganda has publicly insisted it should solely settle for restricted circumstances, and Eswatini has already acquired deportees regardless of mounting criticism.