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WASHINGTON

The White House on Thursday lambasted a federal judge who ruled the Trump administration violated a court order by deporting eight migrants from the US state of Texas to South Sudan.

District Judge Brian Murphy is a "liberal activist,” said spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt.

She accused Murphy of "massive judicial overreach" when he ruled that the federal government failed to comply with an injunction he issued in March that barred migrants from being sent to a nation that was not their home country due to the possibility of persecution or torture in a third-party country.

"Judge Murphy is forcing federal officials to remain in Djibouti for over two weeks, threatening our US diplomatic relationships with countries around the world, and putting these agents' lives in danger by having to be with these illegal murderers, criminals and rapists. This is completely absurd," Leavitt told reporters.

"Judge Brian Murphy is not the Secretary of State, he is not the Secretary of Defense or the Commander-in-Chief. He is a district court judge in Massachusetts. He cannot control the foreign policy or the national security of the United States of America, and to suggest otherwise is being completely absurd," added Leavitt.

The ruling comes after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed during a news conference that eight migrants from Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba, Mexico and South Sudan were deported earlier this week. Officials said all had violent criminal convictions, but attorneys for the men said they were not given due process of a court hearing before being deported.

Government lawyers said the migrants are still in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) but declined to share the location of the plane’s final destination.

An attorney for one of the deportees said an ICE detention center officer told her that her client was one of several from the Texas facility who were sent to South Sudan, a country known for human rights abuses, and ongoing instability, including "crime, kidnapping and armed conflict," according to a previously issued State Department travel advisory.

Murphy said the migrants were given little notice of their deportations, as they were informed Monday evening, and then flown to their destination Tuesday without due process.

"It was impossible for these people to have a meaningful opportunity to object to their transfer to South Sudan," he said, noting that the window of opportunity for the migrants to protest their deportations was only 24 hours.