The Supreme Court has cleared the path for the Trump administration to deport a group of immigrants held at a U.S. military base in Djibouti to South Sudan.
In a brief opinion issued on Friday, the justices affirmed that their prior order, which stayed a federal judge’s ruling in Massachusetts that had restricted the government’s ability to deport immigrants to countries not explicitly named in their removal orders, applies in full to the eight immigrants currently in U.S. custody in Djibouti.
The order came less than two weeks after the high court temporarily stayed a ruling by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, whose order barred the federal government from deporting immigrants to “third countries”—those not explicitly named in their removal orders—without first ensuring, through a series of safeguards, that the individuals would not face torture upon deportation.
Murphy’s May 21 ruling found that the government violated his April 18 order by attempting to deport eight men to South Sudan. The U.S. has evacuated all non-emergency personnel from South Sudan, and the State Department advises against travel there due to “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict.”
The flight carrying the immigrants bound for South Sudan instead landed in nearby Djibouti, where the men have since been held at a U.S. military base.
On May 27, the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court to stay Murphy’s April 18 order, seeking permission to proceed with “third country” removals while the legal battle over the practice unfolds.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer contended that Murphy’s “judicially created procedures are currently wreaking havoc on the third-country removal process” and “disrupt[ing] sensitive diplomatic, foreign policy, and national-security efforts.”
Lawyers representing the immigrants facing potential third-country removals urged the justices to uphold Murphy’s order. They emphasized that the government could still proceed with these deportations, but Murphy’s order “simply requires” the Trump administration “to comply with the law” in doing so.
Several hours after the Supreme Court responded to the Trump administration’s first request, made on June 23, Murphy then claimed that his May 21 order remained unaffected by the high court’s decision.
The Trump administration returned to the Supreme Court the following day, requesting that the justices clarify the federal government’s authority to proceed with deporting the immigrants currently held in Djibouti. Sauer urged the court to act swiftly to address what he called Murphy’s “unprecedented defiance” of the court’s authority.
In Thursday’s brief, an unsigned 7-2 opinion, the majority indicated that the court’s “June 23 order stayed the April 18 preliminary injunction in full. The May 21 remedial order cannot now be used to enforce an injunction that our stay rendered unenforceable.”
Two of the Supreme Court’s liberals, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented, while the third liberal, Justice Elena Kagan, sided with the court’s conservative majority.
She noted that she had previously disagreed with the Supreme Court’s original ruling permitting third-country removals to proceed. “But a majority of this court saw things differently, and I do not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this court has stayed,” she wrote.
The eight illegal immigrants include individuals from Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos, reports noted.
Sotomayor’s dissent contended that “[w]hat the Government wants to do, concretely, is send the eight noncitizens it illegally removed from the United States from Djibouti to South Sudan, where they will be turned over to the local authorities without regard for the likelihood that they will face torture or death.”
She argued that the court should not have considered the government’s request at all, as the government should have made its arguments in the lower courts first. Moreover, she suggested that the Supreme Court’s “continued refusal to justify its extraordinary decisions in this case, even as it faults lower courts for failing to properly divine their import, is indefensible.”
