Eight Minnesota Somalis came within a few hours of being deported earlier this week before a federal judge in Seattle granted them a temporary reprieve. The judge ordered the Immigration and Naturalization Service to halt all deportations of Somalis while a class-action lawsuit is resolved. The Seattle judge relied heavily on an order issued by a federal judge in Minneapolis last March that stopped the deportation of Somali Keyse Jama. That ruling stated that the United States cannot deport anyone to a country, including Somalia, that has no functioning government capable of receiving them. Kevin Magnuson was an attorney on the earlier deportation case. He says that before his litigation, the U.S. government deported 14 Somalis to their war-torn homeland, which has not had a unified government since 1991.