The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to intervene and allow the government to enact deportations of a small group of major criminals, saying a lower judge is meddling in national security matters.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer said Judge Brian Murphy overstepped his boundaries by creating new rules for deportations, and is “wreaking havoc” on the country’s immigration system.

Judge Murphy last week ordered the government to stop deportations of murderers and sex offenders to South Sudan, saying they hadn’t been given enough due process.

Mr. Sauer said that goes beyond what the Constitution requires and what Congress has already laid out in the laws governing deportation.

At issue are unauthorized immigrants who have gone through their immigration process and have been ordered deported, but whose home countries have refused to take them back. Homeland Security has been searching for so-called third countries to accept them and get them off American streets, where they would otherwise have to be released.

Mr. Sauer said Congress has left many of the key decisions about third-country removals to the Executive Branch, and there is no room for the judge to impose new conditions.

“The Due Process Clause does not give such aliens a constitutional entitlement to any extra removal procedures beyond what the political branches have provided,” he told the high court. “But that is precisely what the district court’s injunction does.”

He asked the justices to put a hold on Judge Murphy’s new rules for deportations.

Judge Murphy has already ruled one Guatemalan man’s deportation to Mexico illegal and ordered the government to return him.

And he has ordered new hearings for a group of six or so migrants whom the government tried to send to South Sudan last week.

Judge Murphy said they were given less than 24 hours’ notice of their impending deportation, which the judge said gave them too little time to lodge an objection that they feared torture if sent to that country, which was a change from the deportation orders they were first issued.

“Based on what I have learned, I don’t see how anybody could say these individuals had a meaningful opportunity to object,” Judge Murphy ruled.

He said the U.S. government currently warns all Americans to avoid travel to South Sudan, and he questioned whether it was safe for the U.S. to send migrants there.

The Trump administration says the migrants already had their immigration proceedings.

Mr. Sauer also said Mr. Trump needs to be able to act quickly to speed deportations of criminal noncitizens, particularly in cases where their countries are refusing to take them back.

Among the deportations Judge Murphy is blocking are a Laotian man who murdered a 64-year-old German tourist; a Mexican man who stabbed his roommate to death and has been tied to a gang; and a man from Myanmar who was convicted of repeatedly sexually assaulting a child starting when the victim was 7 years old, and up to when she was 12.

The case is the latest in a string of deportation matters the Trump administration has rushed to the justices, to mixed results.

In one case involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, deported to El Salvador despite a block on being sent to that particular country, the high court ordered the administration to facilitate his return. He remains in El Salvador.

The justices, in a dispute over Mr. Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to try to speed deportations, has also ruled Homeland Security must give more than 24 hours’ notice to people targeted for deportation under the AEA.

• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.