Migrants held in a Texas detention centre were told they would be deported to Libya, then left waiting on a tarmac for hours.
A military aircraft stood ready on Wednesday, but the flight never took off, according to an attorney representing one of the men.
The detainees were woken early, shackled, and driven from Pearsall, Texas, to a nearby military airfield, attorney Tin Thanh Nguyen said.
Nguyen’s client, a Vietnamese construction worker from Los Angeles, was returned to detention by midday after the flight was apparently cancelled.
U.S. officials have remained silent, declining to comment on the failed deportation attempt or whether it would be rescheduled.
The Trump administration has been exploring alternative countries—like Libya—for deportations, intensifying its controversial immigration crackdown.
A federal judge in Boston ruled Wednesday that deporting non-Libyan migrants to Libya without proper screenings would breach a standing court order.
Lawyers filed an emergency motion hours after news broke of the Libya-bound flight, citing fears of torture and persecution.
Nguyen said his client, who has lived in the U.S. since the 1990s, was never asked whether he feared return to Libya.
Despite not signing a deportation consent form written in English, the man was placed in solitary confinement after refusing to comply.
He and several others were allegedly shackled and isolated, deprived of legal safeguards mandated under immigration law.
Vietnam often resists taking back deportees and processes returns slowly, complicating U.S. efforts to send people back.
For now, the plane remains grounded, and the migrants’ fate hangs in the balance—unresolved, uncertain, and deeply contested.