The United States Supreme Court has ruled that President Donald Trump’s administration can deport a group of immigrants who are being held at a U.S. military post in Djibouti back to South Sudan
military post in Djibouti back to South Sudan
The United States Supreme Court has ruled that President Donald Trump’s administration can deport a group of immigrants who are being held at a U.S. military post in Djibouti back to South Sudan.
In a short opinion, the justices said that their earlier order, which put a hold on a federal judge’s ruling in Massachusetts that limited the government’s ability to deport immigrants to countries not specifically named in their removal orders, still applies to the eight immigrants who are currently in U.S. custody in Djibouti.
The injunction came after the Supreme Court stopped a decision by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy. His order specified that before sending immigrants to “third countries” (those not named in their removal orders), the federal government had to ensure, through a series of protections, that the people would not be tortured when they were returned.
Murphy’s decision claimed that the administration disobeyed his previous order by trying to transfer eight people to South Sudan. The U.S. has returned all non-emergency personnel from South Sudan back home. The State Department urges not to go there due of “crime, kidnapping, and armed conflict.”
The jet that was scheduled to convey the immigrants to South Sudan instead landed in Djibouti, which is nearby. Since then, the men have been locked up at a U.S. military post.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to postpone Murphy’s ruling so that they could continue “third country” deportation while the legal struggle against the practice goes on.
John Sauer, the U.S
D. John Sauer, the U.S. Solicitor General, said 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.”
Lawyers for the immigrants facing deportation to a third nation asked the judges to uphold Murphy’s ruling. They said that the government might still go through with these deportations, but Murphy’s order “simply requires” the Trump administration to follow the law when doing so.
Murphy claimed that his decision was still in place after the Supreme Court answered the Trump administration’s first request.
The Trump administration went back to the Supreme Court and urged the justices to make it clear what power the federal government has to deport the people who are now being held in Djibouti. Sauer advised the court to act promptly to deal with what he called Murphy’s “unprecedented defiance” of the court’s power.
The unsigned court order asserted that the “Order stayed the preliminary injunction in full.”
The court’s conservative majority did not agree with Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ketanji Brown
The court’s conservative majority did not agree with Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, both of whom are liberals. On the other side, Justice Elena Kagan agreed with the court’s conservative majority.
She indicated that she didn’t agree with the Supreme Court’s original judgment to let removals to third nations go ahead. “But most of this court saw things differently, and I don’t see how a district court can make someone follow an order that this court has stayed,” she wrote.
Reports suggest that the eight undocumented immigrants are from Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos.
Sotomayor disagreed and said, “What the government wants to do, in concrete terms, is send the eight noncitizens it illegally removed from the United States from Djibouti to South Sudan, where they will be turned over to the local authorities without regard for the likelihood that they will face torture or death.”
She said the court shouldn’t have considered the government’s request because it should have argued in the lower courts first. She also remarked that the Supreme Court’s “continued refusal to justify its extraordinary decisions in this case, even as it faults lower courts for failing to properly divine their import, is indefensible.”
