Supreme Court Clears Trump to Send Migrants to South Sudan (1)

A divided US Supreme Court said the Trump administration is free to send eight migrants to South Sudan, rejecting a judge’s interpretation of a recent high court decision.

The new Supreme Court order comes even as lawyers for the men, now being held at a US military base in Djibouti, say they are at risk of torture and death. South Sudan is on the State Department’s “Do Not Travel” list amid an armed conflict.

The order clarifies the reach of the June 23 decision, when the Supreme Court let President Donald Trump resume quickly deporting migrants to countries other than their country of origin. It tosses out special protections US District Judge Brian Murphy had crafted to protect the eight men from being sent to South Sudan.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, blasting the court as having repeatedly let the Trump administration circumvent the law and defy the federal judiciary.

“Other litigants must follow the rules, but the administration has the Supreme Court on speed dial,” Sotomayor wrote for the pair.

The clash stems from a preliminary injunction Murphy issued April 18, barring the government from deporting migrants to so-called third countries without giving them a chance to contest the chosen location. Third countries are places other than a migrant’s home nation or an alternative ordered by an immigration judge.

A month later, Murphy concluded the government violated his order by putting a group of men on a flight originally destined for South Sudan. The plane instead landed in Djibouti, and Murphy then issued what he called a “remedy” for the administration’s violation of his preliminary injunction, laying out procedures the government would have to follow before again trying to send the men to a third country.

The Supreme Court’s original decision put Murphy’s preliminary injunction on hold but didn’t mention his remedial order. Later that night, Murphy told the parties that his Djibouti-specific ruling “remains in full force and effect.”

In the latest decision, the Supreme Court majority said Murphy’s remedial order “cannot now be used to enforce an injunction that our stay rendered unenforceable.”

The court’s third liberal, Justice Elena Kagan, said she continued to believe the court’s June 23 decision was wrong.

“But a majority of this court saw things differently, and I do not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this court has stayed,” Kagan wrote.

Only one of the men in the case is from South Sudan. The rest are from Mexico, Cuba, Myanmar and other countries.

The case is Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., 24A1153.

(Updates with excerpts from opinions starting in fourth paragraph.)

To contact the reporter on this story:
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Elizabeth Wasserman at ewasserman2@bloomberg.net

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