The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily lifted a lower court order that had required the Trump administration to give migrants the chance to challenge their deportation to a country other than their nation of origin, clearing the way for resumption of such removals and prompting a strongly worded dissent from the three liberal justices.
The conservative majority behind the ruling did not offer a rationale for the order, but said that the preliminary injunction handed down by a district court judge in April is stayed, pending appeal.
"Totally unexplained Supreme Court ruling on 3rd-country deportations will produce widespread confusion in lower courts. Did the court object to nationwide aspect? Think judges lacked jurisdiction? Something else? Who knows?" wrotePolitico's senior legal affairs reporter Josh Gerstein, offering a prediction of what's to come.
Trump administration efforts to deport immigrants to countries they are not from has become one of the most contentious aspects of U.S. President Donald Trump's crackdown on immigration.
In May, the Trump administration put eight men, most of whom are not from South Sudan, on a flight said to be headed to South Sudan, though the flight instead landed in Djibouti. The men have been held in Djibouti since. U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy told Trump administration officials that they "unquestionably" violated a court order he issued in April when it attempted to carry out those third-country deportations to South Sudan.
The Supreme Court's order stays that ruling from Murphy issued in April, which directed the Trump administration not to deport immigrants to countries other than their home countries without giving them adequate notice to raise concerns that they might face danger if sent there.
However, "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," according to ABC News.
In a blistering dissent, Sotomayor wrote that the ruling exposes "thousands to the risk of torture or death" and comes down on the side of the Trump administration even though it had violated the lower court's order. Sotomayor was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson
"The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone anywhere without notice or an opportunity to be heard," she wrote in her dissent.
"Apparently," she continued, "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."
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called the ruling a victory on Monday. "DHS can now execute its lawful authority and remove illegal aliens to a country willing to accept them," she said in a statement. "Fire up the deportation planes."
"When you think it can't get worse, it does!" said Jill Wine-Banks, an MSNBC legal analyst, in response to the ruling.
