Judge Threatens Jeff Sessions With Contempt, Orders Deported Mother and Daughter Returned to United States

A federal judge threatened Attorney General Jeff Sessions with contempt of court on Thursday after the government broke a promise not to deport a mother and daughter fleeing gang and domestic violence in El Salvador until the judge had a chance to rule on their case. “Turn that plane around,” U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan reportedly told the government after learning that it had deported a pair of plaintiffs, Carmen and her daughter J.A.C.F. The group said that the government had issued “assurances in open court that no plaintiff would be deported before midnight.” The Washington Post reported on the dramatic events that led the ACLU to discover that two of their clients had been deported in contravention of the government’s promise: ead ACLU attorney Jennifer Chang Newell, who was participating in the court hearing via phone from her office in California, received an email during the hearing that said the mother and daughter were being deported. After being informed of the situation, Sullivan granted the ACLU’s request to delay deportations for Carmen and the other plaintiffs until the lawsuit is decided, and ordered the government to “turn the plane around.” Justice Department attorney Erez Reuveni said he had not been told the deportation was happening that morning and could not confirm the whereabouts of Carmen and her daughter. demonstrates the cruelty of Sessions’ decision in June to unilaterally overturn a Board of Immigration Appeals ruling that had granted domestic violence survivors the opportunity to apply for asylum on the basis of persecution for “membership in a particular social group.” That board had determined in 2014 that women in a certain country who are unable to leave abusive relationships counted as such a group for asylum seeking purposes, but Sessions’ overturned that decision.