Supreme Court Clears Way for Trump to Deport Migrants to Third-Party Countries

In a ruling Monday evening split down ideological lines, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to deport migrants to countries other than where they came from.

The Supreme Court didn’t explain its reasoning in Monday’s emergency docket, as is usual.

Since taking off Donald Trump’s administration has deported migrants to Panama, Costa Rica and prisons in El Salvador. Most recently in May Immigrants and Customers Enforcement deported eight people to South Sudan without a hearing to determine their safety.

The high court’s Monday ruling lifts a federal judge’s decision from late March that temporarily halted the program. In U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy’s opinion, he wrote that migrants are entitled to an opportunity to argue their asylum case before being deported — especially to a third party nation where their safety is likely threatened.

Following the ruling on Monday, the Court’s three liberal justices issued a 19-page dissent arguing the decision will put thousands at risk of harm.

“Apparently, the Court finds the idea that thousands will suffer violence in farflung 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,” the justices wrote in their dissent. “That use of discretion is as incomprehensible as it is inexcusable.”

Many migrants have been caught in limbo for months as the case played out in court.

In one case, eight deportees from Cuba, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos and Mexico were stuck living in a metal shipping container on a U.S. military base in Djibouti after their flight to South Sudan was rerouted, according to a court filing earlier this month.

The Supreme Court’s decision will permit the Trump administration to send the migrants to countries rife with political violence, like South Sudan and Libya.

The case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia captured the nation’s attention for weeks as the Trump administration and the courts argued over the return of the Maryland father deported to El Salvador’s mega-prison in March. Several Democratic lawmakers made their way to the prison to meet with 30-year-old Abrego Garcia and raise attention around his detainment, while Trump refused to bring the back, despite a Supreme Court ruling ordering the administration to “facilitate” his return.

Abrego Garcia has since been brought back to the United States and charged with federal charges of conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal immigrants for financial gain and unlawful transportation of illegal immigrants for monetary gain. He pleaded not guilty and is seeking fines from the Trump administration in a separate civil case.

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers cited what they called “the government’s pattern of defying this court’s orders and stonewalling,” pointing to 93 instances of Trump officials seeming to publicly ignore federal judge’s rulings to return Abrego Garcia over the course of his detention.

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Amelia Benavides-Colón is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.