Supreme Court allows Trump to resume 3rd-country removals without due process requirement

The Supreme Court’s con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty on Mon­day deliv­ered a sig­nif­i­cant win for the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy, clear­ing the way for offi­cials to resume depor­ta­tion of migrants to third coun­tries with­out addi­tion­al due process require­ments imposed by a dis­trict court judge.

The nation’s hight court did not explain the deci­sion, but it said the stay of Judge Bri­an Mur­phy’s man­date would ter­mi­nate should the admin­is­tra­tion ulti­mate­ly lose an appeal on the mer­its. Lit­i­ga­tion is ongo­ing, but is expect­ed to take years to com­plete.

The case was brought by a group of detainees said to be head­ed to South Sudan who alleged they were nev­er giv­en a chance to raise fears of tor­ture. Judge Mur­phy last month issued a pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion halt­ing any future removals unless detainees were giv­en notice of their des­ti­na­tion, at least 10 days to raise con­cerns for their safe­ty and 15 days to con­test an adverse find­ing by an immi­gra­tion offi­cer.

The effec­tive impact of the Supreme Court’s order on Mon­day is a resump­tion of expe­dit­ed removals of dozens of unau­tho­rized immi­grants to coun­tries oth­er than their own. The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has sent plane loads to El Sal­vador, Guatemala, South Sudan and Libya.

Jus­tice Sonia Sotomay­or, joined by Jus­tices Ele­na Kagan and Ketan­ji Brown Jack­son, issued a bit­ing dis­sent, accus­ing her col­leagues of con­don­ing “law­less” behav­ior by the admin­is­tra­tion in “mat­ters of life and death.”

This Court now inter­venes to grant the Gov­ern­ment emer­gency relief from an order it has repeat­ed­ly defied,” Sotomay­or wrote. “I can­not join so gross an abuse of the Court’s equi­table dis­cre­tion.”

“The Due Process Clause rep­re­sents ‘the prin­ci­ple that ours is a gov­ern­ment of laws, not of men, and that we sub­mit our­selves to rulers only if under rules,’ ” Sotomay­or wrote. “By reward­ing law­less­ness, the Court once again under­mines that foun­da­tion­al prin­ci­ple.”

“Appar­ent­ly, the Court finds the idea that thou­sands will suf­fer vio­lence in farflung 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. That use of dis­cre­tion is as incom­pre­hen­si­ble as it is inex­cus­able. Respect­ful­ly, but regret­ful­ly, I dis­sent.”

Immi­grant advo­cates had asked the jus­tices to keep in place the nation­wide injunc­tion requir­ing “mean­ing­ful notice and oppor­tu­ni­ty to be heard” before any per­son is sent unwill­ing­ly by the U.S. gov­ern­ment to a coun­try oth­er than their place of birth or cit­i­zen­ship.

Trump offi­cials had called the court-ordered require­ments “oner­ous” and ille­gal.

The high court had unan­i­mous­ly indi­cat­ed in a pri­or case that poten­tial depor­tees must be giv­en due process pro­tec­tions. But the jus­tices have not yet spelled out in detail what exact­ly that requires in each case.

Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty spokes­woman Tri­cia McLaugh­lin said in a state­ment on X that the court’s deci­sion is a “MAJOR win for the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of the Amer­i­can peo­ple.”

The plain­tiffs in the case crit­i­cized the Supreme Court’s grant­ed stay and vowed to keep fight­ing.

“The ram­i­fi­ca­tions of Supreme Court’s order will be hor­ri­fy­ing; it strips away crit­i­cal due process pro­tec­tions that have been pro­tect­ing our class mem­bers from tor­ture and death,” said Tri­na Real­mu­to, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Nation­al Immi­gra­tion Lit­i­ga­tion Alliance. “Impor­tant­ly, how­ev­er, the Court’s rul­ing only takes issue with the court’s author­i­ty to afford these pro­tec­tions at this inter­me­di­ate stage of the case — we now need to move as swift­ly as pos­si­ble to con­clude the case and restore these pro­tec­tions.”