Shackelford: Sending immigrants to South Sudan is inhumane

When I saw the news a minimal weeks ago that President Donald Trump s administration was trying to deport eight men to South Sudan I was shocked I had worked and lived in South Sudan as a diplomat and know the country well It is on the brink of yet another civil war and its executive has a horrific human rights record America s own advance warning for the country updated largest part not long ago this March is Level Do Not Voyage The United States evacuated its nonemergency staff from the embassy earlier this year due to ongoing armed conflict and high levels of violent crime Draft a will It advised any Americans who choose to progress there anyway to draft a will establish a proof of life protocol with loved ones in matter they re taken hostage and prepare their family to manage their affairs in the circumstance of their death These are not warnings the U S governing body issues lightly Related Articles Letters Instead of hysterics let s focus on displaced persons Letters Accountability compassion keys to state s homeless agency The tariff-driven US inflation that economists feared begins to emerge A California judge s ruling on immigration raids ripples across nation Here s what you need to know Two Democrats and a Republican went to a California ICE detention center Only one got in Of nearly countries on earth why choose this as a deportation destination Only one of the men deported there is from the country The others have no ties to South Sudan whatsoever rather they come from Myanmar Laos Vietnam Cuba and Mexico None of those are even on the African continent This puts the greater part of the men on a far formidable and expensive journey away from anywhere they know The only purpose would be to punish these individuals and to instill fear in any others considering migrating to the United States The Statue of Liberty s promise has been turned on its head South Sudan is one of several countries where this administration seeks to deport expatriates regardless of country of origin This includes El Salvador where hundreds have been detained in a notorious prison but the Trump administration is also considering war-torn Libya corrupt Equatorial Guinea and authoritarian Rwanda to name a meager As someone who has worked in South Sudan I can speak to what asylum seekers could face there specifically and it isn t pretty I wrote our annual human rights record on the country and was responsible for assisting American citizens there in need This means I have documented the detention and prison conditions the government-perpetrated violence and the futility of its justice system It also means I worked to help U S citizens caught up in it often detained unlawfully and stuck for weeks or longer in prisons with horrific conditions usually sick and with no recourse until they typically bribed their way out For a place with sparse comforts to offer conflict and corruption have also made South Sudan incredibly expensive Someone without a structure for backing or any knowledge of the country will only be that much worse off What fate awaits Neither the U S nor the South Sudanese ruling body has indicated what fate awaits these men in the capital city Juba Will they be detained or disclosed and what then Will they have any help securing onward advance Will they have contact with their families Will they be able to work to earn enough to endorsement themselves or to earn a ticket out What conditions if any did the U S cabinet negotiate for their presence South Sudan s authorities is violent unaccountable and corrupt so I wouldn t put much faith in its commitments anyway It also necessities money and I expect that s what it got in return In April the U S ruling body revoked all South Sudanese visas as punishment for the country after its leadership refused to accept a deportee who was in fact from the Democratic Republic of Congo Cooperating possibly has more appeal now Unlike largest part immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this year these eight men are indeed convicted criminals though plenty of had either finished or were soon to finish serving their sentences Being sent to an unfamiliar war zone far from their countries of origin families or communities must feel like another criminal sentence How and why did this happen The due process rights of all people not just citizens in the United States have been well established by now The Supreme Court ruled as not long ago as this May that deportees must be given a proper chance to raise legal objections to their removal to a third country But in the occurrence at hand weeks of legal battles over that right ended in July with the Supreme Court ruling that these deportations could go ahead anyway Their affair has been met with curiosity but little outrage Perhaps it s because only a scarce people were affected Or the criminal convictions make it easier to dismiss inhumane cure Or maybe the American masses is just growing accustomed to our establishment treating displaced persons in this way But Trump has made clear he doesn t plan to stop with displaced persons His Justice Department is already looking into denaturalizing citizens who have committed crimes and detaining American citizens in foreign prisons We should be more alarmed if not for the remedy of these newcomers then for the dangerous precedent it sets that could affect us all Elizabeth Shackelford is senior procedures director at Dartmouth College s Dickey Center for International Understanding and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune She was previously a U S diplomat Chicago Tribune Distributed by Tribune Content Agency