Deportation Flight to Cambodia Halted

Julianne Hing writes for The Nation:

A plane packed with around 50 Cambodian Americans set for deportation was scheduled to depart on Monday from Texas for Phnom Penh. But a court order issued late Thursday has blocked, at least for now, the Trump administration’s plan to expel them.

A US district-court judge granted a month-long temporary restraining order after attorneys argued that—in the course of raiding, apprehending, detaining, and attempting to deport more than 100 people to Cambodia in recent weeks—Immigration and Customs Enforcement denied people due process and violated the agency’s own procedures.

The restraining order doesn’t cancel the deportation orders. But it does offer these Cambodian nationals, many of whom are refugees and have lived in the United States for decades, time to sort out their cases. The request for a temporary restraining order was filed last Monday as part of a lawsuit brought by the Northern and Southern California chapters of the umbrella civil-rights organization Asian Americans Advancing Justice, and the next hearing in the lawsuit is scheduled for January 11, 2018. Read more…

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