On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the Trump administration, delivering an immediate impact on the president’s deportation policies.
The decision, which followed the court’s ideological lines, granted the administration’s request to stay a lower court injunction that had blocked deportations of individuals to third countries without prior notice. This ruling enables the deportation of criminal illegal aliens to nations such as El Salvador, Libya, and South Sudan.
The court’s conservative justices formed the majority, while Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. “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,” Justice Sotomayor wrote in a dissent.
The case centered on a group of illegal immigrants who contested their deportations to third countries—nations other than their countries of origin. Lawyers representing the migrants urged the Supreme Court to uphold a ruling by U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, who had ordered the administration to suspend deportations of any illegal aliens scheduled for removal to countries not explicitly listed in their deportation orders, Fox News reported.
The federal judge based in Boston ruled that affected immigrants must remain in U.S. custody until they are given the chance to undergo a “reasonable fear interview,” during which they can express concerns about potential torture or persecution if returned to their home countries.
In appealing the case before the Supreme Court, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that Judge Murphy’s ruling had blocked the federal government from deporting “some of the worst of the worst illegal aliens.” He also emphasized that the individuals involved were being held at a U.S. base in Djibouti until they could undergo a reasonable fear interview.
Just last month, the Supreme Court issued a 7-2 ruling affirming the president’s authority to rescind temporary deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua, and other countries in South America and Africa.
