U.S. Supreme Court
Trump administration tells Supreme Court that judge defied its order allowing third-country deportations
Immigrants deported from the United States arrive in Guatemala on an Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation flight during President Donald Trump’s first term in February 2017. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)
The Trump administration told the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday that it had to address a federal judge’s “unprecedented defiance” of its order the previous day that allowed deportation of immigrants to countries other than their own.
The administration motion sought clarification of the Supreme Court’s Monday order that temporarily blocked an injunction by U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy of the District of Massachusetts.
Murphy had issued an April 18 injunction that required immigrants to be given a chance to contest their removals to third countries.
On Monday evening, Murphy said his May 21 ruling enforcing the now-blocked injunction remains in effect. The enforcement order required the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to maintain custody of migrants flown to third countries while he considers whether their removals violated his April 18 order. As a result of the order, eight immigrants who oppose deportation to South Sudan, a country in East Africa, are being held at a U.S. naval base in Djibouti, another country in East Africa.
The New York Times, Reuters and SCOTUSblog are among the publications that covered the request by U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer.
The government’s clarification request called Murphy’s decision “a lawless act of defiance that, once again, disrupts sensitive diplomatic relations and slams the brakes on the executive’s lawful efforts to effectuate third-country removals.”
Sauer said the Supreme Court must “make clear beyond any doubt that the government can immediately proceed with the third-country removals of the criminal aliens from Djibouti.”
Lawyers for the eight men countered that the government had “repeatedly defied” Murphy’s April 18 injunction and continued enforcement of Murphy’s May 21 remedial order “preserves the status quo, ensuring that class members receive the remedy to which they are entitled.”
The case is U.S. Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D.
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