In a high-stakes immigration case, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday granted the Trump administration’s emergency request to lift a lower court’s injunction that had blocked third-country deportations without prior notice. The 6–3 decision marks a significant, if temporary, victory for the administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda.
The court’s conservative majority ruled in favor of staying the injunction, while Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, Fox News reported.
“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 her dissent, calling the decision “so gross an abuse of the Court’s equitable discretion.”
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The underlying legal battle stems from a class-action lawsuit brought by a group of migrants facing deportation to so-called “third countries”, nations that are neither their homeland nor the one originally listed in their deportation orders. Plaintiffs included individuals scheduled for removal to countries such as South Sudan, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Guatemala.
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Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy ordered that any deportations to unnamed third countries be temporarily blocked unless the migrants were first given a “reasonable fear interview”, a process designed to determine if deportation would expose them to torture or persecution.
Judge Murphy emphasized that his ruling did not prevent removals outright but required the government to “comply with the law” during the process. “It simply requires” lawful conduct under the Constitution, he wrote, noting that migrants were entitled to due process before being sent to unfamiliar and potentially dangerous locations.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer challenged the injunction, arguing that Judge Murphy’s order obstructed the removal of “some of the worst of the worst illegal aliens.” Sauer disclosed that several individuals had already been transferred to a military base in Djibouti, where they remained in U.S. custody awaiting their interviews.
The administration has repeatedly pointed to national security and law enforcement concerns in defending its policy of third-country removals, which it claims are necessary to deter irregular migration and address undocumented entry.
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Immigration attorneys, however, argue the practice amounts to unlawful deportation, violating migrants’ rights and federal statutes governing asylum and removal proceedings. Multiple lower courts have sided with those claims in recent months, faulting the administration for carrying out removals without proper legal notice or hearings.
In previous rulings, even the Supreme Court has, albeit narrowly, agreed that certain enforcement actions have overstepped legal boundaries. But Monday’s order signals a shift, giving the administration more leeway in carrying out removals as litigation continues.
The decision drew swift reaction from the White House, which criticized Judge Murphy’s ruling as judicial overreach. Officials also doubled down on their position that undocumented immigrants do not merit the same level of procedural protections.
Meanwhile, attorneys representing the affected migrants said at least a dozen individuals from countries like Vietnam and Myanmar had also been slated for deportation to South Sudan in “clear violation” of Murphy’s earlier order.
