A divided Supreme Court has allowed the administration of United States President Donald Trump to restart swift removals of migrants to countries other than their homeland, lifting a court order that requires they get a chance to challenge the deportations.
The high court majority did not detail its reasoning in the brief order issued on Monday, as is typical on its emergency docket. All three liberal justices dissented.
In May, immigration officials put eight people on a plane to South Sudan, though they were diverted to a US naval base in Djibouti after a judge stepped in.
The refugees and migrants from countries including Myanmar, Vietnam and Cuba had been convicted of violent crimes in the US. Immigration officials have said that they were unable to return them quickly to their home countries.
The case comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by Trump’s administration, which has pledged to deport millions of people who are living undocumented in the US.
In a scathing 19-page dissent, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the court’s action exposes “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 wrote in the dissent, which was joined by the other two liberal judges, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Lawyers for some of the migrants who had been on the flight to South Sudan said they would continue to press their case in court. “The ramifications of Supreme Court’s order will be horrifying,” said Trina Realmuto, the executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, meanwhile, said in a social media post that the decision was a “MAJOR win for the safety and security of the American people”.
The department did not immediately respond to an email request for comment.
District judge concerned about danger facing deportees
The Supreme Court action halts an order from US District Judge Brian E Murphy in Boston, who decided in April that people must have a chance to argue that deportation to a third country would put them in danger – even if they have otherwise exhausted their legal appeals.
He found that the May deportation flight to South Sudan violated his order and told immigration authorities to allow people to raise those concerns through their lawyers. Immigration officials housed the migrants in a converted shipping container in Djibouti, where they and the officers guarding them faced rough conditions.
The administration has reached agreements with other countries, including Panama and Costa Rica, to house immigrants because some countries do not accept US deportations. South Sudan, meanwhile, has endured repeated waves of violence since gaining independence in 2011.
Murphy’s order does not prohibit deportations to third countries. But it says migrants must have a real chance to argue they could be in serious danger of torture if sent to another country.
The third-country deportation case has been one of several legal flashpoints as the Trump administration rails against judges whose rulings have slowed the president’s policies.
Another order from Murphy, who was appointed by former Democratic President Joe Biden, resulted in the Trump administration returning a gay Guatemalan man who had been wrongly deported to Mexico, where he says he had been raped and extorted.
The man, identified in court papers as OCG, was the first person known to have been returned to US custody after deportation since the start of Trump’s second term.
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