US Supreme Court paves way for Trump admin to continue deportation of migrants to 3rd-party countries
'To grant the government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied' is 'rewarding lawlessness,' Justice Sonia Sotomayor says in her dissent
The Supreme Court of the United States
HOUSTON, United States
The US Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Trump administration can continue to deport migrants to third-party countries, lifting a lower court's injunction pausing those deportations.
In the unsigned order that did not explain its reasoning, the nation's highest court put a hold on US District Judge Brian Murphy's ruling that said migrants being deported to nations other than their country of origin should have a "meaningful opportunity" to bring claims that they would be at risk of torture, persecution or death if they were sent there.
The Trump administration has made deals to deport migrants to countries like South Sudan, where there are documented human rights violations. The Supreme Court's ruling now paves the way for the government to quickly remove migrants from the United States to those countries without any legal challenges.
The three liberal justices on the 6-3 conservative-majority high court said their colleagues were "rewarding lawlessness."
"Apparently, the Court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in far flung locales more palatable than the remote possibility that a District Court exceeded its remedial powers when it ordered the Government to provide notice and process to which the plaintiffs are constitutionally and statutorily entitled," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.
"Rather than allowing our lower court colleagues to manage this high-stakes litigation with the care and attention it plainly requires, this Court now intervenes to grant the Government emergency relief from an order it has repeatedly defied," she added.
The Trump administration will now be able to restart its third-party deportations as the case returns to a federal appeals court, but the final decision could ultimately end up back at the hands of the Supreme Court.
"The ramifications of the Supreme Court's order will be horrifying," Trina Realmuto, executive director of National Immigration Litigation Alliance -- one of the groups that filed the lawsuit -- said in a statement.
"It strips away critical due process protections that have been protecting our class members from torture and death," she continued.
The plaintiffs identified in the lawsuit are from Cuba, Honduras, Ecuador and Guatemala.
