South Sudan says 8 men deported from the US are now in its custody
Apuk Ayuel, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry, told reporters that the eight arrived at Juba International Airport on Saturday following 'standard deportation procedures undertaken' by the U.S. government.
The men are 'under the care of the relevant authorities who are screening them and ensuring their safety and well-being,' she said, without specifying where they are held.
U.S. authorities said on Friday that the eight men deported in May and held for weeks at an American military base in Djibouti arrived in South Sudan after the Supreme Court cleared the way for their transfer.
The men — from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam and South Sudan are part of a case that had gone to the Supreme Court, which had permitted their removal from the U.S. Administration officials said the men had been convicted of violent crimes in the U.S.
The deportations have raised safety and other concerns among some in this country.
'South Sudan is not a dumping ground for criminals,' said Edmund Yakani, a prominent civic leader in the country.
South Sudan's government has struggled since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011 to deliver many of the basic services. Years of conflict have left the country heavily reliant on aid that has been hit hard by sweeping cuts in U.S. foreign assistance.
Economic hardship has deepened in recent months because of declining oil revenues, with crude exports to Port Sudan affected by civil war in the neighboring country.
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Frustrated Judge Struggles In The Quicksand Of The Abrego Garcia Case
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In another hearing Monday that stretched for more than two hours, Xinis waded through the latest round of Kafkaesque circularity from the Trump administration as it urged her to dismiss the original Abrego Garcia case now that he is back in the United States, albeit to face trumped-up federal charges in Tennessee. In the end, after very little progress was made, Xinis scheduled another hearing for Thursday, when she wants the Trump administration to put on the witness stand a yet-to-be-determined official who can give first-hand testimony as to the plans for deporting Abrego Garcia to a third country if he is released from custody in his criminal case. It's seems almost inevitable that no new government witness will provide any clearer answers than have been given so far in a case that Xinis described today from the bench as 'like trying to nail Jello to the wall.' 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The government's second motion to dismiss argued that the case is now moot because the Trump administration had satisfied Xinis' preliminary injunction by returning Abrego Garcia to the United States. Xinis, not convinced that the government had yet complied in full, denied that motion, too. For his part, Abrego Garcia's lawyers were asking Xinis to order Abrego Garcia returned to Maryland if and when he is released from custody in the criminal case the Trump administration drummed up against him in Tennessee. Xinis didn't rule on that motion and likely won't until she hears the testimony slated for Thursday. While that is the top-line news, it hardly does justice to the absurdity of some of the Trump administration's arguments. Continuing the cavalcade of DOJ lawyers involved in the case, the bulk of the argument for the Trump administration was carried on Monday by Bridget K. O'Hickey, who until May was working in the Florida Attorney General's Office. 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A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM's Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version. Many thanks to Sarah Posner, John Light, and Nicole Lafond for keeping Morning Memo going so I could get away for a couple of weeks. It was a particularly bad time to be gone: the end of the Supreme Court term, the final passage of the centerpiece legislation of President Trump's second term, and the culminating rulings in some of the most important deportation cases threatening the rule of law. Despite my personal frustration and a deep sense of FOMO, getting away for a bit was an important reset not just for all the usual reasons but because it's easy to lose perspective in this line of work, especially since Jan. 20. I have had my face pressed to the glass of the Trump II presidency in a way that felt necessary, but it inevitably distorted my own perspective on what you need and how to best reach you. Morning Memo has from its inception been focused on providing you with a proportionate, sensible, measured rundown on only the day's essential political news. It has eschewed alarmism and regularly spared you from devoting your limited attention to news that didn't deserve it. It's also tried to maintain a consistent standard for what does deserve your attention, including some occasional reminders that politics is bigger than DC and life is bigger than politics. But after Trump's second inauguration, my own curiosity and inability to make immediate sense of his rampage through the federal government prompted me to take Morning Memo in a somewhat different direction. The sheer volume of essential, often historic, political news that defied easy categorization forced some re-tooling of how to present the news to you. It felt important to come up with new buckets in which to place new kinds of stories. My ongoing focus on the three horseman of the Trump II apocalypse — retribution, destruction, and corruption — was an example of offering new categories for you to use. More broadly, I was determined to come up with a new political taxonomy that accounted for the unprecedented changes in U.S. politics, like the DOGE infiltration and the White House attacks on the federal judiciary. It felt like malpractice merely to carry over the old-style political news coverage into the Trump II era. But coming up with a new taxonomy in real time meant grouping and continually re-grouping not just individual stories but entire categories of stories and that necessarily meant throwing a lot of news at you each day, much more than I had previously expected you to consume. That was a big change from how I'd originally conceived of Morning Memo. I'd always wanted it to be breezy and succinct enough to be read in one quick sitting, but smart enough to make you feel like you'd checked off the box of being an informed citizen. That balance was hard to strike in the first half of 2025. I didn't feel breezy or succinct. In the onslaught of the first 100 days of Trump II, throwing more at you was easy to justify, but it got harder to defend as we moved into the summer. It took a few days away from the daily grind to reassess how to re-position Morning Memo to best serve you. Spending time as a normal human, occasionally consuming some but not all political news, was a good reminder of what I find most helpful in a news site: context and explanation from a reliable narrator who is weaving together a big-picture story from the day's news fragments. The sheer volume of lawlessness and historic political news remains high. It will remain challenging to make sense of it on a daily basis without overwhelming you. Where I've landed is to throw less at you in summary fashion and devote more time to explaining and contextualizing. That doesn't mean condescension or oversimplification. It does mean trying to tell the sweeping story of the Trump II presidency and America's descent into authoritarianism by pulling from multiple storylines to illustrate the larger dynamics in play. Don't worry. It will still be a rundown of the day's political news, an anthology of the most important stories. But I want to get back to a breezier, tighter, more accessible version of Morning Memo that leaves you wanting more, not struggling to make it to the end. See you here tomorrow as we dive back into it.
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Trump Can't Decide If Migrant Farm Worker Industry Is a Worthy Sacrifice for His Mass Deportation Agenda
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM's Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version. President Trump's flip-flopping on whether to upend the agriculture and hospitality industries for the sake of following through on his haphazard mass deportation agenda reveals one aspect of what his immigration policies have, in part, always been about: punishing blue cities and states. Members of the Trump administration have apparently not been on the same page, for weeks, about whether to pillage the agriculture and hotel industries of their migrant workers. As the President sent in the National Guard in to crack down on protesters in Los Angeles who were demonstrating against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in the city, he was also privately mulling whether to pause migrant raids on farms and hotels, aware of the political risks of deporting a workforce vital to two important American industries. By mid June, the Washington Post reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was telling staff to, at least temporarily, pause on raids at farms, hotels and restaurants. Two days later, the DHS reversed course. At one point, Trump even suggested that 'good reputable farmers' might be given some sort of hall pass for employing undocumented immigrants if they 'take responsibility for the people that they hire.' During an interview on Fox News' 'Sunday Morning Futures' with Maria Bartiromo over the weekend, it was clear that Trump has been feeling the heat from farmers, a voting base that has been supportive of his presidency. 'I don't back away,' he said. 'What I do have, I cherish our farmers. And when we go into a farm and we take away people that have been working there for 15 and 20 years, who were good, who possibly came in incorrectly. And what we're going to do is we're going to do something for farmers where we can let the farmer sort of be in charge. The farmer knows he's not going to hire a murderer.' You don't need us to tell you that Trump's second term immigration policies have never been about removing violent criminals from the country. It's another arm of his retribution scheme. While much of Trump's mass deportations agenda is rooted in racism and Stephen Miller's paranoia about a Great Replacement, it is also clear that Trump sees it as a cudgel to go after states and cities that are led by elected Democrats. Those are, conveniently, the only places with sanctuary policies. Efforts to withhold federal funding from municipalities and states that don't comply with the Trump administration's deportation crusade are already underway. A week ago, there were perhaps a dozen Senate Republicans who had concerns about Trump's 'big, beautiful' bill. On Saturday evening, only two voted down the motion to advance it — Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Rand Paul (R-KY). Tillis, as you may already know, promptly drew a primary threat from the president, and just as promptly declared he will not be running for office again anyway. So what happened to all the other senators? Dave Dayen at the American Prospect has a partial answer. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), one of the bill's skeptics, got a whole bundle of favors in a version of the bill that appeared Saturday. The federal share of payment for Medicaid would be increased for 'the state with the highest separate poverty guideline.' That happens to be Alaska. Their share would increase 25 percent above that of a typical state. Other programs bundle together benefits for 'noncontiguous states,' referring to Alaska and Hawaii. That includes an exemption from work requirements for SNAP, an increase in Medicare reimbursement rates to select health care providers, and a waiver from the cost-sharing provisions, whereby a state must contribute to SNAP funding. Other gifts for Murkowski included an expanded tax deduction for whale boat captains. Murkowski voted for the motion to proceed on Saturday evening. Afterwards, the Senate parliamentarian stripped out some of these favors for Alaska. Perhaps Murkowski will now vote no on the bill's final passage. We wouldn't count on it, and, regardless, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) can spare one vote. This morning, the Senate kicked off its 'vote-a-rama,' another term for its back-to-back votes on a series of amendments to the megabill. The first vote focused on whether Senate Republicans can use a problematic budgeting gimmick to attempt to make it seem like the $3.8 trillion cost of extending Trump's 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy won't add to the deficit. My colleague Emine Yücel reported on the whole scheme a few months back: 'They're Engaged In Trickery': What Sen Republicans Are Actually Trying To Do With Their Tax Cut Magic Math She will be updating us on the details of today's proceedings here in our liveblog, if you'd like to follow along or catch up. A Congressional Budget Office assessment finds 11.8 million people would lose their health insurance under the latest version — nearly 1 million people more than would lose it under the House version. A sneakily-inserted provision to drive down the cost of the bill will not only end federal support to wind and solar projects — it will impose new taxes on them. Every hospital in the state of Louisiana sent a letter, reported on by Politico, to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Saturday warning that the Senate bill, which his chamber will soon take up, will be a disaster for his home state. It 'reflects an estimated annual loss of more than $4 billion in total Medicaid funding for Louisiana healthcare providers,' the letter warned. Ryan Reilly at NBC: At least three federal prosecutors who worked on cases against Jan. 6 rioters were fired Friday by the Justice Department, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials familiar with the dismissals. A copy of one of the dismissal letters seen by NBC News was signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, notifying the recipient that they were 'removed from federal service effective immediately.' No reason for the removal was stated in the letter. The Trump administration's star witness in its prosecution of Kilmar Abrego García, Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, was due to be deported, but is now free after cooperating with the government. Court documents and testimony suggest a significant portion of prosecutors accusations against Abrego García rest on Reyes testimony, the Washington Post reported. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) suggested that Mamdani's victory means New Yorkers have 'forgotten' about 9/11. Trump, meanwhile, made the entirely predictable threat of withholding federal funding from New York City if Mamdani wins in November. 'I can't imagine it, but let's say this, if he does get in, I'm gonna be president and he's going to have to do the right thing or they're not getting any money,' Trump told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday. 'He's gotta do the right thing.' Mamdani, for his part, reiterated in response to Trump's threat that he would maintain New York's sanctuary city status. 'It's a policy that had previously been defended by Democrats and Republicans alike, until the fearmongering of this current mayor,' Mamdani he told NBC's Kristen Welker. 'And it's a policy that we've seen ensures that New Yorkers can get out of the shadows and into the full life of the city that they belong to, and it's one that I will be proud to stand up for.' More here from Politico, Axios and TPM's own Hunter Walker. Dara Kerr at the Guardian: Federal agents blasted their way into a residential home in Huntington Park, California, on Friday. Security-camera video obtained by the local NBC station showed border patrol agents setting up an explosive device near the door of the house and then detonating it – causing a window to be shattered. Around a dozen armed agents in full tactical gear then charged toward the home. Jenny Ramirez, who lives in the house with her boyfriend and one-year-old and six-year-old children, told NBC through tears that it was one of the loudest explosions she heard in her life. 'I told them, 'You guys didn't have to do this, you scared my son, my baby,'' Ramirez said. Ramirez told the Guardian everyone who lived in the house was a U.S. citizen. The agents told her they were searching for her boyfriend, she said. Hungary's innovative authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán, threatened 'clear legal consequences' for anyone who took part in Budapest's parade on Saturday. That threat only turned the LGBTQ celebration into a protest against his government. More than 100,000 people showed up. Law enforcement stood by passively. Orbán appears to face a real electoral threat from a center-right challenger, Peter Magyar, in this year's election. Magyar, also conservative, appeared to offer oblique support for the event, the Times reported, writing on social media that Orbán was trying 'to turn Hungarian against Hungarian, in order to create fear and divide us.'
