Updated June 23, 2025 at 7:07 PM EDT
The Supreme Court on Monday blocked a lower court order that required 15 days notice to individuals the Trump administration is trying to deport to countries other than their own.
The high court's action, at least for now, reversed the lower court's order requiring that those being deported have enough time to contact their lawyers and present evidence that would show their lives would be in danger if deported to certain countries.
The order focused on a flight carrying several men from various countries — including Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Cuba and Mexico — which was initially headed to South Sudan but ended up in the East African country of Djibouti in order to give the men time to dispute their final destination. The U.S. government says the men are violent criminals, convicted of crimes including murder, sexual assault, kidnapping and robbery, and said they don't deserve to stay in the U.S.
But Judge Brian Murphy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts last month said people must still get a so-called "credible fear" interview in their native language to be able to dispute being sent to a country they're not originally from. He said people must get at least 15 days to challenge their deportations.
Monday's unsigned Supreme Court order puts that decision on hold while the legal process continues in the lower courts.
In a searing dissent, the court's three liberals accused the conservative majority of "rewarding lawlessness."
Writing for the three, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said "The government has made clear in word and deed that it feels itself unconstrained by law, free to deport anyone, anywhere without notice or an opportunity be heard."
Sotomayor said the Trump administration had already acted "in violation of unambiguous" lower court orders, by flying four noncitizens to Guantanamo Bay, and from there to El Salvador." Following that, she said, "the government removed six people to South Sudan, with less than 16 hours notice" basically overnight, and without any opportunity to contact their lawyers or be heard in court. The government, she said, "thus openly flouted two court orders," even before it went to the Supreme Court.
"This is not the first time the court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last," she said.
Several migrants and U.S. detention officers awaited the court ruling while living in a converted shipping container at a U.S. military base in Djibouti, beset by high temperatures, exposure to malaria, and close proximity to "burn pits," which emit throat-clogging smog from burning trash and human waste.
Monday's Supreme Court order is the latest example of its willingness to allow President Trump's to accelerate deportations and minimize due process, based on the administration's assertion that it will be irreparably harmed by interventions from the lower courts while the cases are fully litigated through the appeals process — a process likely to take months.
Accusations of 'wreaking havoc'
U.S. Solicitor General John Sauer on May 27 asked the Supreme Court for an immediate stay of Murphy's order, saying it is "wreaking havoc on the third country removal process."
"The United States is facing a crisis of illegal immigration, in no small part because many aliens most deserving of removal are often the hardest to remove," he wrote. Through "sensitive diplomacy," the U.S. had convinced third countries to accept the men after their own countries refused, he said, but Murphy's order prevents that "unless DHS first satisfies an onerous set of procedures invented by the district court" to assess whether the men might be tortured or persecuted in the country to which they're sent.
Immigration lawyers told the Supreme Court that even criminals deserve meaningful notice and an opportunity to be heard before they're sent to a country with dangerous conditions where they could be tortured.
Lawyers from the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Human Rights First, and the National Immigration Litigation Alliance say the men set to end up in South Sudan only got notification the night before their flight.
They also say Mexico, for example, had previously accepted its own citizens deported from the U.S., suggesting that the Trump administration's process of removing people to third countries is "intentionally punitive." South Sudan is a politically unstable country in Africa and one of the poorest in the world.
Prioritizing deportations
The strategy to rely on other countries to take in U.S. deportees is not new. But the Trump administration has prioritized getting more countries to repatriate their citizens, including from China, Venezuela and Cuba, in order to more quickly deport people from the U.S.
"And the further away the better, so they can't come back across the border," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during an April cabinet meeting.
DHS policy requires any deportee to get notice of what country they're being sent to, "and an opportunity for a prompt screening of any asserted fear of being tortured there."
The arguments in court have centered on how long migrants should have to contest their removal to a country. DHS says this process takes "minutes," not weeks. In the case of the flight to South Sudan, the men got less than 24 hours' notice. Immigration lawyers say such little time means deportees' have little hope of arguing against a removal, especially if they don't speak English.
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