A US federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration policy of deporting undocumented migrants to countries that are not their own is unlawful.District Judge Brian Murphy put his ruling on so-called “third-country deportations” on hold for 15 days to allow the government to file an appeal.”This case is about whether the Government may, without notice, deport a person to the wrong country, or a country where he is likely to be persecuted, or tortured,” Murphy wrote.The Department of Homeland Security has said it is “fine” to deport a migrant to a third country so long as DHS knows they will not be shot on arrival, Murphy said.”It is not fine, nor is it legal,” he said.The judge noted that Congress has made it US policy not to deport people to countries where their lives would be in danger or they could be subject to torture.Under the DHS policy, however, “immigration officers need not give notice or any opportunity to object before removing someone to an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous country,” Murphy said.A person may be deported if the government has received “‘assurances’ that no persecution or torture will happen there,” he said.”This new policy — which purports to stand in for the protections Congress has mandated — fails to satisfy due process for a raft of reasons, not least of which is that nobody really knows anything about these purported ‘assurances,'” Murphy said.”Whom do they cover? What do they cover? Why has the Government deemed them credible? How can anyone even know for certain that they exist?” he asked.Murphy, an appointee of Democratic president Joe Biden, previously sought to block the deportation of a group of migrants to war-torn South Sudan but was overruled by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court.According to the US authorities, the eight men — two from Myanmar, two from Cuba, and one each from Vietnam, Laos, Mexico and South Sudan — were convicted violent criminals.The Trump administration has defended third-country deportations as necessary since the home nations of some of those who are targeted for removal sometimes refuse to accept them.Donald Trump campaigned for president promising to expel millions of undocumented migrants from the United States, and he has taken a number of actions aimed at speeding up deportations since returning to the White House.

The United States on Wednesday eased its ban on Venezuelan oil exports to Cuba after the communist-run island plunged into an economic crisis, which Caribbean leaders warned could bring instability to the region.US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American from Florida who has spent his political career hoping to topple Havana’s government, attended a summit of the Caribbean Community where he staunchly defended the January 3 US attack that deposed Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro.As Rubio held the talks in the tiny island nation of Saint Kitts and Nevis, Cuba’s coastguard shot dead four people on a speedboat registered in the US state of Florida.The Cuban interior ministry said the boat was “illegal” and that shots were fired from it first. The United States did not have immediate comment.Cuba’s economy has been in freefall since the United States snatched Maduro and forced Venezuela to stop oil shipments to the island, which relied on its leftist ally for half its fuel needs. The Treasury Department said Thursday that the United States would allow “transactions that support the Cuban people” that include Venezuelan oil for “commercial and humanitarian use.”To qualify, the exports would need to go through private businesses and not the vast government or military apparatus in the communist state.- Warnings on crisis -Speaking at the opening of the CARICOM summit on Tuesday, Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness warned that a further deterioration in Cuba would impact stability across the Caribbean and trigger migration — Trump’s top political concern.”Humanitarian suffering serves no one,” Holness said. “A prolonged crisis in Cuba will not remain confined to Cuba.”Holness called for “constructive dialogue between Cuba and the United States aimed at de-escalation, reform and stability.”Canada, which has long broken with its southern neighbor by maintaining warm relations with Havana, announced Can$8 million ($5.8 million) in aid for Cuba, which has experienced rolling blackouts and acute fuel shortages.The Caribbean summit’s host, Saint Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Terrance Drew, studied in Cuba to be a doctor and said friends have told him of food scarcity and garbage strewn in the streets.”A destabilized Cuba will destabilize all of us,” Drew said.The United States has maintained an embargo on Cuba almost continuously since Fidel Castro’s 1959 communist revolution.Since becoming the top US diplomat, Rubio has publicly toned down calls for regime change and Trump has held off on further measures pushed by Cuban-American hardline critics of Havana, such as prohibiting the transfer of remittances.- ‘Without apology’ on Venezuela -Addressing the summit, Rubio staunchly defended the deadly operation that seized Maduro, saying that Venezuela has made “substantial” progress since then.”I will tell you this without any apology or without any apprehension: Venezuela is better off today than it was eight weeks ago,” Rubio said.Rubio said he believed Venezuela had moved to a new phase and that there was a need for “fair, democratic elections,” although he did not lay out a timetable.”Our initial priority in the aftermath of Maduro’s capture was to ensure that there wasn’t instability, that there wasn’t mass migration, that there wasn’t spillover violence, and we believe we have achieved that,” Rubio said.The United States once championed Venezuela’s democratic opposition but since removing Maduro it has worked with interim president Delcy Rodriguez, who was Maduro’s deputy.Trump has voiced satisfaction with Rodriguez, including her welcome to US oil companies, and has threatened her with violence if she does not do his bidding.Rubio separately met at the summit with beleaguered Haiti’s prime minister, Alix Didier Fils-Aime. A transitional council set up nearly two years ago handed power to Fils-Aime this month with US support, after it failed to tackle rampant gang violence or hold elections.Rubio is the highest-ranking sitting US official ever to visit Saint Kitts and Nevis, a tiny former British colony reliant on beach tourism that was the birthplace of a US founding father, Alexander Hamilton.

US President Donald Trump spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky ahead of a fresh round of talks Thursday aimed at ending Russia’s invasion, both sides said on Wednesday.A White House official gave AFP no further details about the call, which came a day before Ukrainian and US envoys were to meet, and ahead of new trilateral talks with Russia expected in early March.But Zelensky wrote on social media that he had spoken with Trump, and that his envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were on the call.”Our teams work intensively and I thanked them for all their work and for their active involvement in the negotiations and the efforts to end the war,” he added.According to Ukrainian presidential adviser Dmytro Lytvyn, the conversation “lasted about 30 minutes”.Ukraine’s lead negotiator Rustem Umerov will meet Witkoff and Kushner in Geneva on Thursday, Kyiv announced.Russian state news agency Tass later said that the Kremlin’s economic affairs envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, also plans to be in the city.”Dmitriev plans to arrive in Geneva on Thursday to pursue negotiations with the Americans on economic issues,” it cited an unnamed source as saying.The meetings are the latest round of negotiations spearheaded by Trump that so far have failed to make meaningful progress on ending Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.Washington is pushing to bring an end to the war triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago, which has left hundreds of thousands dead and destroyed swathes of territory, particularly in eastern and southern Ukraine.- Preparatory talks -Zelensky said his call with Trump “discussed the issues that our representatives will address tomorrow in Geneva during the bilateral meeting, as well as preparations for the next meeting of the full negotiating teams in a trilateral format at the very beginning of March”.”We expect this meeting to create an opportunity to move talks to the leaders’ level. President Trump supports this sequence of steps. This is the only way to resolve all the complex and sensitive issues and finally end the war,” he added.The Ukrainian leader has already said that a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, should take place to resolve the most difficult issues in the talks.The talks, based on an American plan unveiled at the end of last year, are deadlocked primarily on the fate of the Donbas, the industrial region in eastern Ukraine that has been the epicentre of the fighting.Russia is pushing for full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, and has threatened to take it by force if Kyiv does not cave at the negotiating table.But Ukraine has rejected the demand and signalled it would not sign a deal without security guarantees that deter Russia from invading again.