Im­mi­gra­tion au­thor­i­ties ap­pear to have be­gun de­port­ing mi­grants from Myan­mar and Viet­nam to South Su­dan de­spite a court or­der on re­movals to third coun­tries, at­tor­neys for the mi­grants said Tues­day.

Up to a dozen peo­ple from sev­er­al coun­tries may have been de­port­ed to Africa, im­mi­gra­tion rights lawyers told a judge.

An im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cial in Texas con­firmed in an email that at least one man from Myan­mar had been flown to South Su­dan Tues­day morn­ing, ac­cord­ing to court doc­u­ments.

A woman al­so re­port­ed to at­tor­neys that her hus­band from Viet­nam and up to 10 oth­er peo­ple were flown to Africa on Tues­day.

Those re­movals would vi­o­late a court or­der from a judge in Mass­a­chu­setts re­quir­ing that peo­ple must have a chance to chal­lenge re­movals to coun­tries oth­er than their home­lands, at­tor­neys from the Na­tion­al Im­mi­gra­tion Lit­i­ga­tion Al­liance wrote.

They asked Judge Bri­an E. Mur­phy for an emer­gency court or­der to pre­vent re­moval with­out an op­por­tu­ni­ty to go to court. He pre­vi­ous­ly said de­por­ta­tions to Libya would vi­o­late his rul­ing.

The De­part­ment of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and the White House did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­turn mes­sages seek­ing com­ment.

South Su­dan’s po­lit­i­cal land­scape is frag­ile and re­cent vi­o­lence be­tween gov­ern­ment troops and armed op­po­si­tion groups has es­ca­lat­ed ten­sions. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by LIND­SAY WHITE­HURST | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Re­bec­ca San­tana con­tributed to this re­port.