SCOTUS Allows Trump Deport Migrants to 3rd-Countries

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Trump administration can resume deporting migrants to countries other than their home nation with limited notice.

In a 6–3 decision that broke down along ideological lines, the justices stayed an April ruling by a Boston federal judge that stymied the rapid deportation effort.

The conservative majority did not provide a rationale for their ruling but liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a scathing 19-page dissent that was joined by fellow liberals Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

“In matters of life and death, it is best to proceed with caution,” Sotomayor wrote. “In this case, the Government took the opposite approach.”

“This Court now intervenes to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied. I cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion.”

On April 18, Boston-based US District Judge Brian Murphy issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from rapidly moving migrants to so-called “third countries” unless several prerequisites were met.

The Supreme Court’s order is in effect while the Boston-based First Circuit Court of Appeals considers the White House’s appeal of Murphy’s injunction.

Last month, the Trump administration moved to deport eight migrants to war-torn South Sudan, six of whom had been convicted of violent offenses including murder, arson, robbery, and sexual assault. Those individuals are now being held at a US naval base in the east African country of Djibouti while litigation plays out.

Of the eight migrants, two each are from Cuba and Myanmar, while the others are from Laos, Mexico, South Sudan and Vietnam. A Trump administration official previously claimed the deportees’ crimes were so “monstrous and barbaric” that no other country would take them.

Murphy ruled last month that the Trump administration “unquestionably” violated his ruling and suggested officials could be found in criminal contempt. Trump’s team petitioned the Supreme Court to halt the April preliminary injunction in response.

In her dissent, Sotomayor argued the high court’s ruling had exposed “thousands to the risk of torture or death.”

“The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard,” she added.

Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin wrote in a X post that the ruling meant it was time to “[f]ire up the deportation planes.”

“The SCOTUS ruling is a victory for the safety and security of the American people,” she added. “The Biden Administration allowed millions of illegal aliens to flood our country, and, now, the Trump Administration can exercise its undisputed authority to remove these criminal illegal aliens and clean up this national security nightmare … DHS can now execute its lawful authority and remove illegal aliens to a country willing to accept them.”

Murphy, who was appointed to the federal bench by former President Joe Biden, didn’t prohibit deportations to third countries. But he found migrants must have a real chance to argue they could be in serious danger of torture if sent to another country.

Another order in the same case resulted in the Trump administration returning a gay Guatemalan man who had been wrongly deported to Mexico, where he claimed to have been raped and extorted — the first person known to have been returned to US custody after deportation since the start of Trump’s second term in January.