WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Saturday denounced the Trump administration for what she said appeared to be a deliberate scheme to ignore court-ordered protections for a group of deported immigrants who feared persecution in their home countries of Nigeria and Gambia.

But Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia appeared reluctant to order the return of the five migrants to the United States, instead asking the government to submit a sworn statement detailing its efforts to prevent the deportations of the people to their home countries. Repatriating the migrants would violate the protections they had received from immigration judges in the United States. Chutkan said that her "hands may be tied," and expressed doubt that a ruling in the migrants' fav

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