Eight violent criminal illegal aliens were finally deported to South Sudan, despite a district court judge’s multiple efforts to keep them in U.S. custody – including defiance of a Supreme Court ruling – after the High Court issued a brief opinion Friday declaring that the rogue judge had no authority to invalidate its ruling.

On May 21, the Supreme Court placed a stay on Massachusetts Federal District Judge Brian Murphy’s injunction against deportation of the illegal aliens to South Sudan. While only one of the eight is a South Sudan national, the other seven were set to be deported to South Sudan because their countries of origin wouldn’t take them.

In response, Judge Murphy announced that the Supreme Court’s action didn’t apply to him and that his injunction would remain in effect, which prevented the illegal aliens from being moved out of a U.S. military base in the east African country of Djibouti to the South Sudan.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court issued a “clarification” affirming its stay of Judge Murphy’s injunction:

“Our 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.”

If allowed to stand, Judge Murphy’s action “would serve to ‘coerce’ the Government into ‘compliance’ and would be unenforceable given our stay of the underlying injunction,” the brief says.

Even Liberal Justice Elena Kagan wrote that she concurs with the brief (despite her support of the concept of the injunction), because a lower court can’t force its will on the Supreme Court.

“I do not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this Court has stayed,” Kagan writes in her concurring statement. “Because continued enforcement of the District Court’s May 21, 2025 order would do just that, I vote to grant the Government’s motion for clarification.”

The Supreme Court brief provides a chronological list of Judge Murphy’s efforts on behalf of the criminal illegal aliens, which led to Thursday’s clarification:

Judge Murphy is a former public defender and a criminal defense attorney who was appointed by former President Joe Biden less than six months ago.

The Trump administration is embroiled in court cases challenging its authority to deport illegal aliens to countries other than their countries of origin that have refused to take them, holding up deportations for years, in some cases.

Thursday’s Supreme Court brief temporarily stays activist judges’ efforts to prevent the U.S. government from deporting criminal illegal aliens to third-country nations willing to accept them while the cases work their way up through the lower courts.

The eight criminal illegal aliens Judge Murphy tried to protect had all received both due process and final removal orders, one of which was 26 years old, The Center Square notes:

“Those deported to South Sudan were all men illegally in the U.S. with extensive criminal histories, including felony convictions and prison sentences in the U.S. They all received due process in federal immigration court and received final removal orders from federal immigration judges that were never enforced, including one dating back to 1999.”

Each of the eight illegal aliens had previous convictions, ranging from sexual assault to first-degree murder: