The Supreme Court has paved the way for the Trump administration to deport a group of immigrants detained at a U.S. military base in Djibouti to South Sudan.
In a concise opinion released on Friday, the justices confirmed that their previous order, which had paused a federal judge’s ruling in Massachusetts that limited the government’s capacity to deport immigrants to countries not specifically mentioned in their removal orders, is fully applicable to the eight immigrants currently in U.S. custody in Djibouti.
This order was issued less than two weeks after the high court temporarily halted a ruling by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, whose decision prohibited the federal government from deporting immigrants to “third countries”—those not explicitly named in their removal orders—without first ensuring, through a series of safeguards, that the individuals would not be subjected to torture upon deportation.
Murphy’s ruling on May 21 determined that the government breached his April 18 order by attempting to deport eight men to South Sudan. The U.S. has evacuated all non-emergency personnel from South Sudan, and the State Department advises against travel to the region due to “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict.”
The flight transporting the immigrants destined for South Sudan instead landed in the nearby Djibouti, where the men have since been detained at a U.S. military base.
On May 27, the Trump administration sought the Supreme Court’s intervention to stay Murphy’s April 18 order, requesting authorization to continue with “third country” removals while the legal dispute regarding the practice is ongoing.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that Murphy’s “judicially created procedures are currently wreaking havoc on the third-country removal process” and “disrupt[ing] sensitive diplomatic, foreign policy, and national-security efforts.
Attorneys representing immigrants at risk of third-country removals urged the justices to uphold Murphy’s ruling. They stressed that the government could still move forward with these deportations, but Murphy’s order “merely requires” the Trump administration “to adhere to the law” in executing them.
Several hours after the Supreme Court addressed the Trump administration’s initial request, submitted on June 23, Murphy asserted that his May 21 order remained intact despite the high court’s ruling.
The Trump administration approached the Supreme Court again the next day, seeking clarification on the federal government’s power to continue deporting the immigrants currently detained in Djibouti. Sauer urged the court to respond promptly to what he termed Murphy’s “unprecedented defiance” of the court’s authority.
In a brief issued on Thursday, an unsigned 7-2 opinion, the majority indicated that the court’s “June 23 order fully stayed the April 18 preliminary injunction. The May 21 remedial order cannot now be utilized to enforce an injunction that our stay has rendered unenforceable.”
Two of the Supreme Court’s liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented, while the third liberal, Justice Elena Kagan, aligned with the court’s conservative majority.
She remarked that she had previously disagreed with the Supreme Court’s initial decision allowing third-country removals to proceed. “However, a majority of this court viewed the matter differently, and I do not understand how a district court can enforce compliance with an order that this court has stayed,” she stated, according to CNN.
The eight undocumented immigrants include individuals from Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos, as reported.
Sotomayor’s dissent argued that “[w]hat the Government intends to do, in practical terms, is send the eight noncitizens it unlawfully removed from the United States from Djibouti to South Sudan, where they will be handed over to local authorities without consideration for the likelihood that they will face.
She contended that the court ought not to have taken into account the government’s request whatsoever, as the government should have presented its arguments in the lower courts initially. Furthermore, she proposed that the Supreme Court’s “persistent unwillingness to explain its exceptional decisions in this matter, even while criticizing lower courts for not adequately interpreting their significance, is unjustifiable.”
