The Supreme Court on Monday handed a win to the Trump administration by allowing it to resume deporting criminal noncitizens to “third countries,” or places where they did not originate, such as South Sudan, without first giving them a chance to argue that they would face harm if removed.
In a brief, unsigned order, the justices granted the Justice Department’s emergency request to block a lower court ruling that required the government to provide advance notice and an opportunity for deportees to raise claims of persecution or torture related to third countries. The 6–3 ruling did not include an explanation, but the court’s three liberal justices dissented.
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Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, blasted the move as a “gross abuse” of discretion, accusing the majority of “rewarding lawlessness.”
“Apparently, the court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in far-flung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a district court exceeded its remedial powers,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.
The decision stems from a lawsuit filed in Massachusetts, where U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, ordered the Trump administration in April to provide several deportees to South Sudan with a “meaningful opportunity” to raise fear-based claims before being sent to countries where they face torture or death. Murphy later found the administration violated his order by flying eight criminal migrants to South Sudan, a country the State Department has warned against traveling to due to conflict and instability.
The detainees were stopped and rerouted to a U.S. facility in Djibouti, where they remain as litigation continues. The administration argued that the group, which allegedly included illegal immigrants from Myanmar, Mexico, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam, committed serious crimes such as murder and arson and needed to be removed as soon as possible.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that Judge Murphy imposed “onerous procedures” that infringed on the president’s authority to manage foreign affairs. He added that arranging deportations to third countries often requires “sensitive diplomacy,” particularly when a migrant’s home country refuses to accept them back.
The case drew increased scrutiny after immigrant rights groups revealed that the United States was holding migrants initially bound for South Sudan at a military base in Djibouti without access to their attorneys. Some, including individuals from Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos, were reportedly confined in a converted Conex shipping container.
Under U.S. immigration law, deportations are permitted to third countries only if it is “impracticable, inadvisable, or impossible” to send someone to their country of origin or an alternative previously designated nation. Plaintiffs from Cuba, Honduras, Ecuador, and Guatemala argued that the government ignored those requirements and was rushing to remove them without proper process.
One plaintiff, identified as O.C.G., is a gay man from Guatemala who was deported to Mexico earlier this year despite never being told. He was allegedly kidnapped and raped during a previous stay in Mexico. He was later deported again, this time to Guatemala, where he went into hiding before being brought back to the U.S. earlier this month.
SUPREME COURT MAKES TRUMP WAIT ON KEY DECISIONS
Murphy had ruled that the administration’s removal policy likely violated the Constitution‘s guarantee of due process, which generally requires notice and an opportunity to be heard before a person can be subjected to government action. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to block his ruling last month.
The Trump administration has defended the policy as a necessary tool to remove “the worst of the worst” from the country, including immigrants whose home governments are unwilling to accept their return.