The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Monday delivered a significant win for the Trump administration’s immigration policy, clearing the way for officials to resume deportation of migrants to third countries without additional due process requirements imposed by a district court judge.
The nation’s high court did not explain the decision, but it said the stay of the lower court judge’s mandate would terminate should the administration ultimately lose an appeal on the merits. Litigation is ongoing, but is expected to take years to complete.
The Supreme Court’s order on Monday allows the Trump administration to resume carrying out expedited removals of dozens of unauthorized immigrants to countries other than their own.
The lawsuit at the center of the case was originally filed by immigrants who were either deported to a third country without due process or at risk of being removed.
Before reaching the Supreme Court, the case had grown to encompass several other migrants, including eight men, convicted of violent crimes, who were given notices of removal to the East African country of South Sudan. After U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in federal court in Boston blocked the administration’s attempt to deport the group to South Sudan without giving them a sufficient chance to contest their removal, the group disembarked in Djibouti, where they remain on a military base.
In an order Monday, Murphy said the eight men in Djibouti remain protected from immediate removal despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, referencing another order he had issued last month — separate from the one put on hold by the Supreme Court. That ruling required the migrants in Djibouti to have reasonable fear interviews and “a minimum of 15 days” to seek to move to reopen immigration proceedings to challenge their potential removal to a third country.
In response to Murphy’s latest order, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said the Boston judge was “refusing to obey” the Supreme Court.
“Expect fireworks tomorrow when we hold this judge accountable for refusing to obey the Supreme Court,” Miller said on Fox News.
In regard to the Supreme Court order, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, issued a biting dissent from the majority’s order, accusing her colleagues of condoning “lawless” behavior by the administration in “matters of life and death.”
“This Court now intervenes to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied,” Sotomayor wrote. “I cannot join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion.”
“The Due Process Clause represents ‘the principle that ours is a government of laws, not of men, and that we submit ourselves to rulers only if under rules,’” Sotomayor wrote. “By rewarding lawlessness, the Court once again undermines that foundational principle.”
“Apparently, the Court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in farflung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled. That use of discretion is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable. Respectfully, but regretfully, I dissent.”
Immigrant advocates had asked the justices to keep in place the nationwide injunction requiring “meaningful notice and opportunity to be heard” before any person is sent unwillingly by the U.S. government to a country other than their place of birth or citizenship.
Trump officials had called the court-ordered requirements “onerous” and illegal.
Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement on X that the court’s decision was a “MAJOR win for the safety and security of the American people,” adding, “fire up the deportation planes.”
The high court had unanimously indicated in a prior case that potential deportees must be given due process protections. But the justices have not yet spelled out in detail what exactly that requires in each case.
The plaintiffs in the case criticized the Supreme Court’s granted stay and vowed to keep fighting.
“The ramifications of Supreme Court’s order will be horrifying; it strips away critical due process protections that have been protecting our class members from torture and death,” said Trina Realmuto, the executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance. “Importantly, however, the Court’s ruling only takes issue with the court’s authority to afford these protections at this intermediate stage of the case — we now need to move as swiftly as possible to conclude the case and restore these protections.”
