The daughter of a woman murdered by a man from Laos who is among those controversially deported from the US to South Sudan has spoken out about her family’s pain but also to decry the lack of rights afforded to those who were expelled to countries other than their own.
Birte Pfleger lives in Los Angeles and was a history student at Cal State University in Long Beach when her parents came to visit her from their native Germany in 1994 and ended up shot by Thongxay Nilakout during a robbery while on a sightseeing trip. Pfleger’s mother, Gisela, was killed and her father, Klaus, wounded.
Nilakout, now 48, is Laotian and was among eight convicted criminals from countries including Mexico, Cuba, Vietnam and Myanmar who were deported to the conflict-torn African country, amid uproar over Donald Trump’s extreme immigration policies.
In an interview with the Guardian, Pfleger said: “It’s been 31 years living with the irreparable pain and permanent grief, so, on the one hand, I wanted him gone. On the other hand, I’m a historian and I have taught constitutional history. He was denied due process and that’s a constitutional problem.”
The government of South Sudan has not disclosed the men’s exact whereabouts since arriving in the country earlier this month, after legal problems had caused them to be stuck in nearby Djibouti after legal wrangling, or provided any details about their future.
A lawyer representing the men said “their situation is fragile,” noting their relatives have not heard from the deportees since a US military plane flew them to Juba, South Sudan’s capital, before midnight on 4 July.
A police spokesperson in South Sudan, Maj Gen James Monday Enoka, indicated that the men may ultimately be moved on.
“They will be investigated, the truth will be established and if they are not South Sudanese they will be deported to their rightful countries,” Enoka said. But few details are forthcoming. The US Department of Homeland Security called the men “sickos”.
The deportations had been initially blocked by US district judge Brian Murphy, who had ruled that the group needed to receive notice and due process before being taken to South Sudan, including the opportunity to express fear of being harmed or tortured there.
But in a 7-2 ruling, the US supreme court paused Murphy’s orders, clearing all obstacles preventing the Trump administration’s plan.
Just days after the ruling, the administration issued a memo suggesting officials would ramp up deportations to third countries with little notice and due process. The directive by Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), said US officials may deport migrants to countries other than their own with as little as six hours’ notice, even if those third party nations have not made assurances about their safety.
Legal experts have objected.
“We are going to continue to fight the policy that conflicts with the statute, the regulations and with the constitution,” said Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, an organization leading a class-action lawsuit against Ice.
The UN human rights office denounced the action and urged the US to halt deportations to third-party countries. More than 250 Venezuelans have just been repatriated after being deported by the US without due process to a brutal anti-terrorism prison in El Salvador. Previously a multinational group of migrants was sent to Panama from the US and ended up trapped in a hotel then caged in a jungle setting, while more recently another group was deported to the tiny African kingdom of Eswatini, which critics there described as “human trafficking” and lamented the prospect of more to follow.
“International law is clear that no one shall be sent anywhere where there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be in danger of being subjected to serious human rights violations such as torture, enforced disappearance or arbitrary deprivation of life,” the UN said in a statement.
Nilakout was 17 when he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for his murderous attack on Birte Pfleger’s parents. In 2012, the US supreme court ruled that life without parole was unconstitutional for minors. After nearly 30 years behind bars, Nilakout became eligible for parole in 2022, despite a challenge from Pfleger, and was released from a California state prison the following year. He was picked up in Trump’s mass deportation dragnet after the Republican president returned to the White House in January.
Pfleger, now a history professor at Cal State University in Los Angeles, said she felt conflicted when she found out that Nilokaut had been deported to South Sudan.
“The moral dilemma here is that he should have never been let out of prison. But once he was released from prison, Ice should have been able to deport him, or he should have self-deported to Laos. But of course, what happened is he was put on a Gulfstream jet headed for South Sudan that violated a federal judge’s orders to give notice. He and the others were denied due process,” she said.
Pfleger continued: “I am not involved in victims’ rights organizations or anything like that. I have not gone to law school, but I have read the constitution and the history of it. And I think that due process rights are fundamental. And when they’re no longer fundamental, we all have a problem.”
The pain for Pfleger and her sister of losing their mother and their father being wounded having watched his wife get shot and being unable to help her persists, and the family had not expected Nilakout to be freed, she said, adding that her father, Klaus, is 93 and frail.
My mom was everything to him,” she said.
In a statement, the government of South Sudan cited “the longstanding support extended by the United States” during its fight for independence and its post-independence development, for the latest cooperation.
Between 2013 and 2016, a civil war killed 400,000 people in South Sudan. Earlier this year, the threat of a new war breaking out pushed the US embassy to issue a level 4 warning to Americans not to go to South Sudan because of crime, kidnapping and armed conflict there.
The German government recently warned, via the foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, posting on social media that: “After years of fragile peace, South Sudan is again on the brink of civil war.”
The UN commission on human rights in South Sudan warned “We are witnessing an alarming regression that could erase years of hard-won public progress.”
The UN added that a humanitarian crisis was looming with half the country already suffering food insecurity and two million internally displaced, with a further two million having fled the violence to seek sanctuary in neighboring countries.