Supreme Court allows Trump to restart swift deportation of migrants away
from their home countries
[June 24, 2025]
By LINDSAY WHITEHURST
WASHINGTON (AP) — A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump
administration to restart swift removals of migrants to countries other
than their homelands, lifting for now a court order requiring they get a
chance to challenge the deportations.
The high court majority did not detail its reasoning in the brief order.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by the other two liberal justices,
issued a scathing dissent.
Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin suggested
third-country deportations could restart soon. “Fire up the deportation
planes," she said in a statement, calling the decision “a victory for
the safety and security of the American people."
But a judge said one deportation flight originally bound for South Sudan
wouldn't be completing the trip right away.
The immigrants on board the May flight were from countries including
Myanmar, Vietnam and Cuba. They had been convicted of serious crimes in
the U.S., and immigration officials said they were unable to return them
quickly to their home countries.
They face possible “imprisonment, torture and even death," if sent to
South Sudan, said their attorney Trina Realmuto, executive director of
the National Immigration Litigation Alliance.
U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy in Boston said a previous order
allowing them to bring up those concerns in court remains in force. The
immigrants have been diverted to a naval base in Djibouti.
The case comes amid a sweeping immigration crackdown by Republican
President Donald Trump’s administration, which has pledged to deport
millions of people who are living in the United States illegally.
“The Constitution and Congress have vested authority in the President to
enforce immigration laws and remove dangerous aliens from the homeland,”
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said. The Supreme Court’s action
“reaffirms the President’s authority to remove criminal illegal aliens
from our country and Make America Safe Again.”
In her 19-page dissent, Sotomayor wrote that the court’s action exposes
“thousands to the risk of torture or death" and gives the Trump
administration a win despite earlier violating the lower court's order.
“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 to be heard,” she wrote in the dissent, joined by
Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
South Sudan, the world’s newest and one of its poorest countries, has
endured repeated waves of violence since gaining independence from Sudan
in 2011, and escalating political tensions in the African nation have
threatened to devolve into another civil war.
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The Justice Department said in court documents that the government
is weighing the order to decide its next steps.
The Supreme Court action halts Murphy's April order giving
immigrants a chance to argue deportation to a third country would
put them in danger — even if they have otherwise exhausted their
legal appeals.
He found that the May deportations to South Sudan violated his order
and told immigration authorities to allow people to raise those
concerns through their lawyers. Immigration officials housed the
migrants in a converted shipping container in Djibouti, where they
and the officers guarding them faced rough conditions.
The administration has reached agreements with other countries,
including Panama and Costa Rica, to house immigrants because some
countries do not accept their citizens deported from the U.S. The
migrants sent to South Sudan in May got less than 16 hours’ notice,
Sotomayor wrote.
The order from Murphy, who was appointed by Democratic President Joe
Biden, didn't prohibit deportations to third countries. But he found
migrants must have a real chance to argue they could be in serious
danger of torture if sent to another country.
Another order in the same case resulted in the Trump administration
returning a gay Guatemalan man who had been wrongly deported to
Mexico, where he says he had been raped and extorted — the first
person known to have been returned to U.S. custody after deportation
since the start of Trump’s second term.
The justices confronted a similar issue in Trump’s effort to send
Venezuelans accused of being gang members to a notorious prison in
El Salvador with little chance to challenge the deportations in
court.
But in that case, the justices put the brakes on deportations under
an 18th century wartime law, saying migrants must get a “reasonable
time” to file a court challenge before being removed.
The conservative-majority court has sided with Trump in other
immigration cases, however, clearing the way for his administration
to end temporary legal protections affecting a total of nearly a
million immigrants.
Those victories are among several recent emergency-docket wins the
Trump administration has recently racked up before the
conservative-majority court on issues ranging from a ban on
transgender troops in the military to the dramatic downsizing of the
federal government.
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