The Trump administration can resume quickly deporting immigrants to a “third countries”, or countries other than those immigrants’ homeland, without giving them any opportunity to contest their removals, the supreme court ruled on Tuesday.
The six-justice conservative majority of the high court temporarily lifted a lower-court decision that required the administration to provide immigrants sufficient notice and the opportunity to claim fear of torture or persecution in the countries where they are being sent. The Trump administration had claimed this stipulation had prevented it from “efficiently removing aliens” from the US.
As is typical in emergency orders, the justices did not explain why it granted the administration’s request.
The three liberal justices of the court, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the order.
Tuesday’s ruling will take effect while the supreme court considers the larger question in the case. Justices said they would hear oral arguments in December.
It is the second time the supreme court has sided with the Trump administration over “third-country” deportations.
Attorney general Todd Blanche called the administration’s policies “entirely lawful and a critical tool for immigration enforcement” in a social media post following the supreme court’s order.
“Unlike the lower court, SCOTUS waited to hear from both sides before making the decision,” Blanche wrote.
The supreme court’s intervention comes days after the administration filed an emergency request to the justices, hoping to continue deporting immigrants to third countries – including those that the US state department considers dangerous.
The Trump administration has entered into a series of agreements with other countries that have allowed it to deport more than 25,000 immigrants to at least 29 countries, according to Third Country Deportation Watch, a project run by Refugees International and Human Rights First.
Countries that have received US deportees include the Central African Republic, which is grappling with unrest and terrorism due to political and militia instability, and South Sudan, where a humanitarian crisis has been unfolding because of political and economic collapse.
On Monday, two dozen UN human rights experts warned that the deportation of thousands of migrants from the US to third countries has set off a “cascade of human rights violations” that could have “deadly” consequences.
Many third-country deportees have faced dire conditions and violence after they ended up in countries without any legal status. Earlier this month, two men that the Trump administration expelled to Equatorial Guinea were bound, fitted with bags over their heads, beaten and pushed down a flight of stairs, all in plain view of other US deportees, according to witnesses and human rights lawyers. Detainees said the men were facing retaliation for speaking to journalists and human rights experts about the poor conditions they faced.
“This cruel and inhumane policy is a black eye on Lady Liberty,” said Adelita Grijalva, a Democratic representative from Arizona. “We are a nation that promises to welcome the ‘poor’ and ‘huddled masses’ yearning for freedom. Instead, we are sending vulnerable people into harm’s way – and, in some cases, potentially to their deaths.”
One of the men who was beaten in Equatorial Guinea was her constituent, Ahmed Soliman – a gay man from Egypt who had fled discrimination in his home country and spent most of his life in Phoenix.
Lawyers for the immigrants have challenged the “third country” deportation policy, arguing that they had not been given “notice and a meaningful opportunity to present fear-based claims”.
Lawyers for the administration have said there’s no need for individual fear-based claims because countries willing to accept immigrants have already agreed not to persecute or torture anyone. Solicitor general D John Sauer, the government’s attorney, wrote to the supreme court that the lower-court orders “created substantial logistical problems with ongoing removal operations – including the cancellation of flights – and led to added expense, potential diplomatic issues, and the inability to remove dangerous criminals”.
Prior to the supreme court’s order on Tuesday, two lower courts had separately sided with the immigrants.
