The US Supreme Court has cleared the path for President Donald Trump’s administration to continue deporting migrants to countries other than their home.
By a 6-3 vote, the judges overturned a lower court order ordering the government to provide migrants a “meaningful opportunity” to inform officials about the risks of being deported to a third nation.
The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the majority decision, calling it “rewarding lawlessness”.
The case concerns eight migrants from Myanmar, South Sudan, Cuba, Mexico, Laos, and Vietnam who were deported in May on a plane believed to be bound for South Sudan. The Trump administration described them as “the worst of the worst”.
Boston-based US District Judge Brian Murphy decided that the removals breached an order he made in April requiring migrants to be given the opportunity to argue that they risked being tortured or killed if they were deported to third countries, even if their prior legal challenges had failed.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson condemned the majority’s unsigned judgement on Monday, calling it a “gross abuse”.
“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,” Sotomayor wrote.
“That use of discretion is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable.”
The Department of Homeland Security described the verdict as “a victory for the safety and security of the American people”.
“Fire up the deportation planes,” stated the agency’s spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin.
The Trump administration said the eight migrants committed “heinous crimes” in the United States, including murder, arson, and armed robbery.
However, the migrants’ lawyers stated in a declaration with the Supreme Court that many of the detained had no previous histories.
The National Immigration Litigation Alliance, which represented the plaintiffs, described the court’s decision as “horrifying”.
Its executive director, Trina Realmuto, stated that the ruling put its victims in danger of “torture and death”.
Trump petitioned the Supreme Court after a Boston-based appeals court declined to overturn a lower court decision last month.
The first intervention by Judge Murphy, a Biden appointee, forced the US government to retain the migrants in Djibouti, a Horn of Africa country with an American military base.
US Solicitor General John Sauer told the Supreme Court that immigration authorities had “been forced to establish a makeshift detention facility for dangerous criminals” in a converted conference room.
Sauer claimed that the government is frequently unable to repatriate violent criminal migrants to their home countries because those countries refuse to accept them, allowing them to remain in the United States and “victimise law-abiding Americans”.
Monday’s judgement is another success for the Republican president’s campaign of mass deportation.
Last month, the Supreme Court allowed Trump to withdraw Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelan nationals, affecting approximately 350,000 migrants.
In another decision in May, the judges decided the president may temporarily halt a humanitarian programme that has allowed almost half a million migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to remain in the United States for two years.
