WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday made it easier for the Trump administration to deport convicted criminals to “third countries” to which they have no previous connection.
The court in a brief unsigned order put on hold a federal judge’s ruling that said those affected nationwide should have a “meaningful opportunity” to bring claims that they would be at risk of torture, persecution or death if sent to countries the administration has made deals with to receive deported immigrants.
The three liberal justices on the conservative-majority court all dissented.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion that the court had stepped in “to grant the government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied.”
As a result the administration will be able to quickly remove immigrants to such third countries, including South Sudan.
Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, who has come under heavy fire from MAGA world for his decisions in the case, later clarified that people should have at least 10 days to bring a claim.
Murphy recently said the administration had violated his previous order by flying eight migrants to South Sudan. The men are now being held in a U.S. facility in Djibouti while the litigation continues.
The unnamed plaintiffs, Murphy wrote in his original April decision, are merely seeking “an opportunity to explain why such a deportation will likely result in their persecution, torture and/or death.”
All the those potentially affected by the litigation are already subject to deportation but cannot be sent to their countries of origin. Murphy’s rulings, like other cases that have arisen as a result of the Trump administration’s hardline immigration policy, focus solely on what legal process they receive before they can be deported.
His order required detainees to be given notice if the government intends to send them to a entirely different country, to their country of origin, or to an alternative country that the government had previously indicated they could be sent to.
In a court filing Solicitor General D. John Sauer had complained that Murphy’s decisions imposed an “onerous set of procedures” that encroached on the president’s power to conduct foreign policy.
He said the government wishes to deport “some of the worst of the worst,” which is why their home countries are “often unwilling to take them back.”
Convincing third countries to accept criminally convicted immigrants in particular “requires sensitive diplomacy, which involves negotiations and the balancing of other foreign policy interests,” he added.
Lawyers for the four lead plaintiffs, identified by their initials, said in court papers that Murphy’s injunction merely “provides a basic measure of fairness” to ensure the government is following the law. The plaintiffs identified in the lawsuit are from Cuba, Honduras, Ecuador and Guatemala.
Under immigration law, the government can only deport people to third countries if it is “impracticable, inadvisable, or impossible” to send them either to their home countries or a previously designated alternative country, the plaintiffs’ lawyers added.
The Guatemalan plaintiff, identified as O.C.G. is a gay man who the plaintiffs say was quickly deported to Mexico earlier this year even though it was not previously designated as a country he could be sent to. O.C.G. had previously said that was kidnapped and raped when in Mexico last year.
The Mexican government sent him to Guatemala, where he was until recently in hiding.
On June 4, the Trump administration returned him to the United States.
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