The Trump administration deported eight migrants convicted of various crimes to South Sudan after weeks of legal back-and-forth between district courts, the Justice Department, and ultimately the Supreme Court, which twice ruled the deportations could take place.

At around 8:30 p.m. Eastern time on July 4, a military plane carrying the eight migrants departed the U.S. military base in Djibouti, where they were held as the deportation effort was delayed by lower court stays and injunctions. The plane arrived in South Sudan less than four hours later, shortly before midnight on Friday, according to CBS News.

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A photo later shared by the Department of Homeland Security showed the migrants, all handcuffed, aboard the plane and surrounded by military officials.

The migrants’ arrival in South Sudan came mere hours after a federal judge in Washington, D.C., issued an administrative stay on the deportation effort, barring DHS from “moving, transferring, or removing” the eight men while the court considered a new constitutional challenge to their removal.

That new challenge was an emergency habeas petition, which argued that sending the men to the war-torn African nation would amount to unlawful punishment in violation of the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth amendments.

Following his stay on the deportation effort, however, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss moved the case to Massachusetts, where U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy reportedly had the final word before the scheduled deportation flight and a threat of another appeal to the Supreme Court by the DOJ if it was blocked again.

Murphy ultimately denied the migrants’ attorney’s request for a temporary restraining order on their deportations to South Sudan, citing an earlier Supreme Court ruling.

“This Court interprets these Supreme Court orders as binding on this new petition, as Petitioners are now raising substantially similar claims, and therefore Petitioners motion is denied,” Murphy said in the ruling.

Murphy’s ruling paved the way for the migrants’ removal to the East African Country, which the Supreme Court had already greenlit in two separate rulings.

Both of those orders from the high court involved previous rulings from Murphy.

In late June, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to resume deporting criminal migrants to “third countries,” or places where they did not originate, including South Sudan. That included granting an emergency request from the DOJ to block a lower court ruling from Murphy that required the administration to give deportees a “meaningful opportunity” to raise fear-based claims before being sent to countries where they face torture or death.

JUDGE TEMPORARILY HALTS SOUTH SUDAN DEPORTATIONS DESPITE TRUMP WINS AT SUPREME COURT

In the second ruling, the Supreme Court ruled late this week that Murphy overstepped by trying to block the South Sudan deportations despite the previous order.

All of the eight migrants deported to South Sudan have been convicted of serious crimes in the United States. Only one of them is from South Sudan, while the others are from Vietnam, Mexico, Laos, Cuba, and Myanmar.

Kaelan Deese contributed to this report.