06/08/2025

ICE Officers Stuck in Djibouti Shipping Container with Deported Migrants

The officers now face threats that include rocket attacks from Yemen

Nearly a dozen immigration officers and eight deportees are sick and stranded in a metal shipping container in the searing-hot East African nation of Djibouti, where they face the constant threat of malaria and rocket attacks from nearby Yemen, according to a federal court filing issued Thursday.

A federal judge in Boston interrupted an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation flight taking immigrants from Cuba, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Mexico to South Sudan more than two weeks ago. U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy said the flight violated his order prohibiting officials from sending immigrants to countries where they aren’t citizens without a chance to ask for humanitarian protection. He instructed officials to arrange screenings.

Trump officials could have flown the immigrants back to the United States. Instead, they were taken to Djibouti, where in late May officers turned a Conex container into a makeshift detention facility on U.S. Naval Base Camp Lemonnier, according to Mellissa Harper, an ICE official, who detailed the conditions Thursday in a required status update to the judge.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Washington Post.