Supreme Court Backs Trump on Deportations With Short Notice

A sharply divided US Supreme Court let the Trump administration resume quickly deporting migrants to countries other than their own, lifting a judge’s order that gave people 10 days notice and a chance to argue they would be at risk of torture.

Over a scathing dissent from the court’s three liberals, the high court granted an emergency request from the administration, which said the order from a Massachusetts federal judge usurped presidential authority and interfered with diplomatic efforts.

As is often the case with emergency orders, the court as a whole gave no explanation. But dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the majority of “rewarding lawlessness,” saying the administration had violated the judge’s earlier order when it tried to send a group of men to South Sudan with less than 24 hours notice.

“Apparently, the court finds the idea that thousands will suffer in farflung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a district court exceeded its remedial powers,” Sotomayor wrote. She said she “cannot join so gross an abuse” of the high court’s authority.

Fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the dissent.

The decision blocks the trial court order while litigation continues over efforts to deport people to so-called “third countries” — places other than their home nation or an alternative ordered by an immigration judge.

The order marks a shift for the Supreme Court. The justices previously pushed back against the administration’s efforts to send some immigrants to harsh or potentially dangerous locations with minimal advance notice. The Supreme Court said in April the government must give people a “reasonable time” to challenge their deportations.

Notice Required

US Solicitor General D. John Sauertold the Supreme Court the latest case involved “some of the worst of the worst illegal aliens,” people who committed such heinous crimes that their home countries won’t take them back.

US District Judge Brian Murphy on April 18 barred the government from conducting so-called third-country deportations without giving people a chance to argue that they would be at risk of persecution or torture.

The following month, Murphy said the government violated his order by trying to quickly fly eight men to South Sudan, a country under a State Department ‘Do Not Travel’ advisory. The men are now being held in a converted shipping container at a US naval base in Djibouti, the government said in a June 5 court filing.

As part of his follow-up decision, Murphy said people had to be provided notice in a language they could understand and given 10 days to claim they had reason to fear persecution or torture. Should the administration reject a person’s claim, the migrant would have 15 days to seek to reopen immigration proceedings.

The men “are simply asking to be told they are going to be deported to a new country before they are taken to such a country, and be given an opportunity to explain why such a deportation will likely result in their persecution, torture, and/or death,” Murphy wrote in the April 18 order. “This small modicum of process is mandated by the Constitution of the United States.”

The case is among a growing number of instances of judges finding that US officials didn’t fully comply with court orders stemming from Trump’s hard-line immigration policies.

The case is Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., 24A1153.

(Updates with longer excerpt from dissent in fourth paragraph.)

To contact the reporter on this story:
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net

Sara Forden

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