A top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official on Thursday detailed appalling and unsafe conditions faced by a group of deportees, and the government officials guarding them, at a U.S. military base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti.
Melissa Harper, the No. 2 official at ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, bemoaned a lack of adequate security equipment at the U.S. base Camp Lemonnier. In a sworn court declaration, she described illness among the detainees and government agents, inadequate medical care, and 100-degree outdoor temperatures. She detailed risks of malaria, exposure to smoke from nearby burn pits, and potential attacks from militants in Yemen.
“The aliens are currently being held in a conference room in a converted Conex shipping container on the U.S. Naval base in Camp Lemonnier,” said Harper in a sworn declaration in federal court in Massachusetts. “This has been identified as the only viable place to house the aliens.”
Eight detainees — from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, South Sudan, and Vietnam — who had been convicted of serious crimes in the U.S. were flown to the military base last month after the Trump administration attempted to expel them to South Sudan. A judge blocked that expulsion, telling the administration they could not send the men to the war-stricken country before they were given an opportunity to contest their deportation.
Now imprisoned in Djibouti, the men are currently supervised by 11 ICE personnel with two other ICE employees serving as medical staff. Those officials, Harper said in court, “do not have the capacity to maintain constant surveillance, custody, and care” of the detainees.
Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for the immigrants in the case, told The Intercept that the government brought this situation upon itself.
