A federal judge on Monday tore into the Trump administration over its failure to give fair legal treatment to a group of migrants it planned to send to South Sudan but is holding in Djibouti.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, an appointee of former President Biden, accused the government of mischaracterizing his order that required the administration to provide sufficient notice before deporting migrants to a country where they have no ties and “manufacturing the very chaos they decry.”

He found last week that the administration had violated that order when it boarded eight migrants on a flight headed for South Sudan.

However, he noted that the court “stayed its hand” at the time and did not require the government to return the individuals to the United States, instead letting them finish their process abroad.

“Since that hearing, merely five days ago, Defendants have changed their tune,” Murphy wrote in a 17-page ruling that denied the government’s request for reconsideration. “It turns out that having immigration proceedings on another continent is harder and more logistically cumbersome than Defendants anticipated.”

The judge noted that if the remote proceedings proved too complicated, the government could always return them back to the United States.

“To be clear, the Court recognizes that the class members at issue here have criminal
histories,” Murphy wrote. “But that does not change due process.”

South Sudan erupted into civil war soon after it gained independence in 2011, and a peace deal recently collapsed.

Immigration attorneys representing the migrants had argued that their return to the U.S. was “imminently reasonable — and necessary,” citing a Supreme Court decision in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador.

Trump criticized Murphy in a Truth Social post on Thursday, suggesting the judge would not allow these “monsters” to “proceed to their final destination.”

“The Judges are absolutely out of control, they’re hurting our Country, and they know nothing about particular situations, or what they are doing — And this must change, IMMEDIATELY!” he wrote in the post, urging the Supreme Court to “put an END” to the matter.