SEATTLE – A federal judge has granted a nationwide temporary restraining order to bar the Immigration and Naturalization Service from deporting Somalis to their war-torn homeland.

The ruling Monday effectively halts the imminent deportation of at least 39 Somalis in INS detention across the country, a lawyer said.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman found the Somalis would likely face great bodily harm if sent back to their East African homeland, a country that has been without a central government since a civil war began in 1991.

Maine is among the states that have seen an influx of Somalis in recent years. Most have settled in Portland and Lewiston. The mayor of Lewiston created a stir by calling on Somalis to halt their migration to the city because its ability to absorb them had reached its limit.

The District Court in Minnesota had already ruled in a case there that deportations to Somalia without acceptance by a functioning government were unlawful, said lawyer Karol Brown, representing four Somalis held in Seattle.

In addition, Brown said, federal courts in the Eastern and Western districts of Louisiana had issued temporary restraining orders in local cases where Somalis faced imminent deportation.

Garrison Courtney, an INS spokesman in Seattle, said earlier that the U.S. government has a responsibility to deport noncitizens who have committed certain crimes, do not show up for court-ordered deportation and those who have final orders of deportation.

Courtney did not immediately return a call for comment after the ruling late Monday.

Brown said the Seattle lawsuit, as amended last week, seeks to represent all Somalis in similar jeopardy of deportation nationwide, although the case has not yet been certified as a class action by the judge.

“Also, based on the evidence, it was plain that without a nationwide TRO [temporary restraining order], the INS would continue to deport people to Somalia,” Brown said.