The Supreme Court on Monday lifted judge-imposed limits on the Trump administration’s deportations to countries where migrants have no ties over a scathing dissent from the court’s liberal justices.
The administration warned U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy’s injunction was endangering immigration officials stuck in Djibouti guarding a group of convicted criminals, who were destined for South Sudan until Murphy blocked the flight.
The majority did not explain its reasoning to lift the ruling. In a 19-page dissent, the three liberal justices said their colleagues were “rewarding lawlessness.”
“Apparently, the Court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in farflung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote.
“That use of discretion is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable,” she continued, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The case will now return to an appeals court, and it could ultimately return to the justices on their normal docket.
“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,” Sotomayor lamented.
As part of its broader immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has looked to third-country removals, a process by which authorities deport a migrant to a country other than the one on their deportation order issued by an immigration judge.
The administration insists it is acting lawfully and is conducting the deportations to more easily remove violent criminals.
Represented by immigration legal groups, several anonymous noncitizens sued over claims that the administration’s actions violate multiple federal laws and their constitutional due process rights.
Murphy, an appointee of former President Biden who serves in Boston, in April agreed to their request for a nationwide injunction blocking the deportations unless the administration gives the migrants sufficient ability to raise claims they will face torture in the third country.
The battle reached the Supreme Court’s emergency docket soon after Murphy agreed that the administration’s effort to deport a group of convicted criminals to South Sudan, a war-torn country in East Africa, violated his order.
“That injunction lacks a plausible basis in law and jeopardizes this country’s foreign-policy and national-security interests,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote of the judge’s injunction.
“It obstructs immigration officials from using a critical means for effectuating long-overdue removals of a class of aliens that includes some of the most heinous criminals. And it subjects third-country removals to judicial superintendence under a moving set of goalposts,” he continued.
The judge didn’t force the migrants’ return to the United States, but he said immigration authorities must retain custody until they can raise any legal claims.
The Trump administration landed the plane at a military base in Djibouti, and it has warned about the safety and health consequences for the agents who continue to guard the migrants.
The May 20 South Sudan flight came days after Murphy said a planned flight to Libya would violate his order.
“Defendants’ own choices — to violate the district court’s orders and to opt to implement the court’s remedy for those violations overseas — are causing the operational and diplomatic difficulties about which they complain,” the immigration legal groups wrote in court filings.
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