The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a ruling pausing a ruling of a lower court judge that allowed migrants the chance to contest their removal to countries other than their own.
The ruling on Monday, June 23, is considered a win for the Trump administration, which has sought to rapidly deport migrants to countries like Libya, El Salvador and South Sudan. The court’s three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — dissented.
The Trump administration had argued that the order had prevented thousands of deportations due to an “onerous set of procedures” that allowed migrants to challenge deportations to another country on the basis of fearing being persecuted, tortured or killed.
“The United States is facing a crisis of illegal immigration, in no small part because many aliens most deserving of removal are often the hardest to remove,” Solicitor General John Sauer wrote in his emergency appeal.
The ruling reverses a previous decision from U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston, who ordered in April that the Department of Homeland Security inform immigrants and allow them to tell the United States if they could face harm there.
“This small modicum of process is mandated by the Constitution of the United States,” Murphy wrote.
Murphy ordered again in May that the Trump administration had violated his order when it attempted to send eight migrants to South Sudan, a country that appears on the Trump administration’s travel ban list. The migrants are currently being held at a U.S. military base in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa.
The decision to pause the order countries raises concerns for their safety and will likely raise the level of sheer terror felt by migrants, said Adam Isacson, a migration and border expert with the Washington Office on Latin America.
“It looks like the Trump administration got a green light to send people to third countries, like Libya and South Sudan,” Isacson said, “some of the most dangerous places in the world — without any regard to the individual’s safety or their constitutional right to not be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment.”
Jeff Abbott covers the border for the El Paso Times and can be reached at:jdabbott@gannett.com; @palabrasdeabajo on Twitter or @palabrasdeabajo.bsky.social on Bluesky.
This article originally appeared on El Paso Times: US Supreme Court backs Trump on migrant deportations to nations like South Sudan
Reporting by Jeff Abbott, El Paso Times / El Paso Times
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