South Sudan

In early July 2025, the United States deported eight men to South Sudan after forcibly transferring them out of the United States in violation of a court order. The group included individuals from Cuba, Mexico, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Sudan. (The man from Sudan had been resettled to the United States as a refugee in childhood and ordered removed to Sudan, but had subsequently lost Sudanese citizenship and acquired South Sudanese nationality as a result of South Sudan’s independence.) The men were deported without notice or an opportunity to ask for protection from South Sudan. U.N. human rights experts condemned the forced transfers to South Sudan, warning that: “[t]o protect people from torture and other prohibited cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, enforced disappearances, and risks to life, they must be given an opportunity to express their objections to removal in a legally supervised procedure.” 

At the time that the United States initiated the forced transfers to South Sudan, a U.S. federal court had issued a preliminary injunction in D.V.D. v. DHS, prohibiting the deportation of people to a third country that the government never raised as a potential country of removal during their immigration proceedings, without notice or an opportunity to present a fear claim. This practice denies them due process and creates the risk that they will be sent to persecution and torture. It violates the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act, Constitutional due process protections, and international treaty obligations codified in U.S. law including the prohibition on refoulement. After the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initiated the transfers in May 2025, the federal court ruled that DHS had violated the preliminary injunction. Rather than returning the men to the United States, the U.S. government diverted the flight and confined them in a shipping container on a U.S. military base in Djibouti for weeks while it sought a stay of the order from the Supreme Court. On June 23, 2025 the Supreme Court stayed the order and allowed the deportations to proceed. The case drew widespread criticism from rights advocates, who underscored the lack of due process and the dangers of being sent to one of the world’s most unstable states. DHS attempted to justify the removals by claiming that the men’s home countries would not accept them. However, the Government of Mexico spent months coordinating with South Sudan to secure the safe return of the Mexican national, which occurred in September 2025. Monthly removal flights to Cuba are ongoing, and several such flights to Laos and Vietnam have taken place in recent months.

As of December, six of the original group of eight third country nationals remained detained by the South Sudanese government in a guarded complex in Juba, South Sudan. Additional information about the conditions of their detention has not been made publicly available. Third country nationals detained in South Sudan have reportedly been unable to communicate with legal counsel or family members for weeks at a time. 

The United States and South Sudan did not have a formal agreement. South Sudan officials claimed to accept the transfers as a “gesture of goodwill” after the United States revoked visas for high-level South Sudanese officials earlier that year. The government indicated it was willing to accept additional transfers in the future. In return, South Sudan has pressed the Trump administration to lift sanctions on powerful businessman and political insider Benjamin Bol Mel, reverse the visa revocations, restore access to a frozen Federal Reserve account for dollar transactions, and support U.S. investment in its oil, gas, and mineral sectors. Officials also sought U.S. backing in their efforts to prosecute First Vice President Riek Machar, currently under house arrest. On November 6, 2025 the Trump administration justified the end of Temporary Protected Status for South Sudan (effective January 5, 2026) as “sending consistent foreign policy messaging” regarding the need for South Sudan to accept the removal of its citizens and third country removals.

Security and humanitarian conditions in South Sudan remain dire. The U.S. State Department cautions against travel to South Sudan due to crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict. Years of failed peace agreements have left South Sudan mired in violence between government and opposition forces. In 2024, the rupture of a critical oil pipeline in neighboring Sudan triggered a fiscal crisis, cutting state revenue by nearly two-thirds. International monitors describe ongoing political violence, corruption, and widespread human rights abuses, underscoring the dangers to individuals transferred there. South Sudan has a history of serious abuses against individuals held in police and military custody.