Supreme Court allows Trump's third-country deportations, in major test for president
The Supreme Court on Monday granted the Trump administration's request to stay a lower court injunction blocking them from deporting individuals to third countries without prior notice— a near-term win for the Trump administration as it looks to quickly enforce its immigration crackdown.
Justices on the high court ruled 6-3 to stay the lower court injunction, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.
"Rather than allowing our lower court colleagues to manage this high-stakes litigation with the care and attention it plainly requires, this Court now intervenes to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied," Justice Sotomayor said.
"I cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion," she added.
At issue was a group of migrants challenging their removals to third countries, or countries that were not their country of origin.
Lawyers for those migrants had urged the Supreme Court earlier this month to leave in place a ruling from U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, who previously ordered the Trump administration to keep in U.S. custody all migrants slated for deportation to a country not "explicitly" named in their removal orders – known as a third-country deportation.
Murphy, a federal judge in Boston, presided over a class-action lawsuit from migrants who are challenging deportations to third countries, including South Sudan, El Salvador and other countries, including Costa Rica, Guatemala and others that the administration has reportedly eyed in its ongoing wave of deportations.
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Murphy ruled that migrants must remain in U.S. custody until they can have the opportunity to conduct a "reasonable fear interview," or the chance to explain to U.S. officials any fear of persecution or torture should they be released into the country.
Murphy stressed his order does not bar Trump "from executing removal orders to third countries." Instead, he emphasized in an earlier order, "it simply requires" the government "to comply with the law when carrying" out such removals under the U.S. Constitution and the Trump administration's wave of eleventh-hour removals and deportations.
In appealing the case to the Supreme Court, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that Judge Murphy's ruling had blocked them from removing "some of the worst of the worst illegal aliens," including a class of migrants sent to South Sudan earlier this year without due process or notice.
He reiterated in a separate order that the migrants remain in U.S. custody at a military base in Djibouti until each of them could be given a "reasonable fear interview," or a chance to explain to U.S. officials any fear of persecution or torture, should they be released into South Sudanese custody.
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The Supreme Court update comes after a flurry of lower court challenges aimed at blocking Trump’s immigration crackdown in his second White House term.
U.S. judges have repeatedly ruled that the Trump administration has violated due process by failing to notify the migrants of their imminent removals, or afford them any opportunity to challenge their deportations in court – a view reiterated, albeit narrowly, by the Supreme Court four separate times since Trump took office.
White House officials, meanwhile, have blasted so-called "activist" judges as attempting to enact a political agenda, and have repeatedly rejected the notion that illegal immigrants are not entitled to due process.
As many as a dozen people from several countries, including Vietnam and Myanmar, were allegedly ordered deported to South Sudan— which lawyers for the immigrants previously argued was in "clear violation" of Judge Murphy's order.
This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.