WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court made it easier Monday for the Trump administration to deport convicted criminals to “third countries” to which they have no previous connection.
In a brief unsigned order that did not explain its reasoning, the court put on hold a federal judge’s ruling that said those affected nationwide should have a “meaningful opportunity” to bring claims that they would be at risk of torture, persecution or death if they were sent to countries the administration has made deals with to receive deported immigrants.
As a result, the administration will be able to try to quickly remove immigrants to such third countries, including South Sudan. Affected immigrants can still attempt to bring individual claims.
“The ramifications of the Supreme Court’s order will be horrifying; it strips away critical due process protections that have been protecting our class members from torture and death,” said Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, one of the groups that brought the legal challenge.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that the decision was a “victory for the safety and security of the American people.” She also criticized the Biden administration, saying its immigration policies allowed too many migrants into the country.
“DHS can now execute its lawful authority and remove illegal aliens to a country willing to accept them,” McLaughlin said. “Fire up the deportation planes.”
The three liberal justices on the conservative-majority court all dissented.
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Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion that the court had stepped in “to grant the government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied.”
She said the court was “rewarding lawlessness” by allowing the Trump administration to violate immigrants’ due process rights.
The fact that “thousands will suffer violence in far-flung locales” is less important to the conservative majority than the “remote possibility” that the judge had exceeded his authority, Sotomayor said.
Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, who has come under heavy fire from MAGA world for his decisions in the case, later clarified that people should have at least 10 days to bring a claim.
As Sotomayor referred to, Murphy recently said the administration had violated his previous order by flying eight migrants to South Sudan. The men are being held in a U.S. facility in Djibouti while the litigation continues.
The unnamed plaintiffs, Murphy wrote in his original April decision, are merely seeking “an opportunity to explain why such a deportation will likely result in their persecution, torture and/or death.”
All those potentially affected by the litigation are already subject to deportation but cannot be sent to their countries of origin. Murphy’s rulings, like other cases that have arisen as a result of the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policy, focus solely on what legal process they receive before they can be deported.
His order required detainees to be given notice if the government intends to send them to entirely different countries, to their countries of origin or to alternative countries that the government had indicated they could be sent to.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer had complained in a court filing that Murphy’s decisions imposed an “onerous set of procedures” that encroached on the president’s power to conduct foreign policy.
He said the government wishes to deport “some of the worst of the worst,” which is why their home countries are “often unwilling to take them back.”
Persuading third countries to accept criminally convicted immigrants in particular “requires sensitive diplomacy, which involves negotiations and the balancing of other foreign policy interests,” he added.
Lawyers for the four lead plaintiffs, identified by their initials, said in court papers that Murphy’s injunction merely “provides a basic measure of fairness” to ensure the government is following the law. The plaintiffs identified in the lawsuit are from Cuba, Honduras, Ecuador and Guatemala.
Under immigration law, the government can deport people to third countries only if it is “impracticable, inadvisable, or impossible” to send them either to their home countries or previously designated alternative countries, the plaintiffs’ lawyers added.
The Guatemalan plaintiff, identified as O.C.G., is a gay man who the plaintiffs say was quickly deported to Mexico this year even though it was not previously designated as a country he could be sent to. O.C.G. had said that was kidnapped and raped in Mexico last year.
The Mexican government sent him to Guatemala, where he was, until recently, in hiding.
On June 4, the Trump administration returned him to the United States.
